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    COTY

    Assailant -- Year 226

    QOTY

    "But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura


    [private]  the world out there has teeth; heartfire
    #1

    CASIMIRA

    dragon-shifting daughter of ashhal and ryatah

    She has not had nightmares in months, and she doesn’t know why they suddenly have chosen to return now.

    It was near dawn when she was startled awake, her heart thundering wildly against her chest and her pale skin glistening with a cold sweat in the places that her white scales did not cover. She swears that she can still smell the smoke and fire from the war, and that her skin still burns where the dragon stallion’s talons had torn her open. She closes her eyes in an attempt to steady herself but all she sees is the bright flash of fire lighting up the shadows, and then the star-studded mare rushing at her. 

    Opening her ice-blue eyes again to force the images away, she feels her heart clench with a certain longing. She wishes Badden were here, knowing that if she had wanted she could have curled beneath his wing until her racing pulse had quieted, but tonight, she was alone.

    She stands, shaking the debris and the fear off of her, her skin smoothing again to just her bright white coat as the scales disappear. In the distance the horizon has slowly begun to lighten, and she looks in the direction of Tephra. A sigh shudders past her lips, debating: she knows she could go home if she wanted to. She knows the land is likely healed from the war, but now, she feels as though she has missed her window to return. 

    When she started to walk she did not realize she was going in the direction of Nerine. It’s not until a coastal wind whips through, with a such a frigid ferocity that she is sure it cuts into her bones, that she realizes where she is. In the distance she can hear the waves as they batter against the stone cliffs, and while she finds herself suddenly itching to get to the coastline she knows that she will not make it far before Heartfire detects her presence. The Nerinian queen was one of the few that her mother considered an actual friend, and Casimira has heard enough about her to know better than to intrude on her kingdom.

    #2

    She's got the devil's eyes

    The blue and white mare can often be found standing sentinel upon the stark, wind-whipped cliffs of her home. It might be a curious thing to many, but anyone who knew where to look might understand what a spectacularly endless view one could have on many of those stony perches. And anyone who knew the Nerinian queen would know she is likely at her most dangerous dangling so precariously close to the edges of the rocks.

    It’s not an imminent danger though, contrary to those who might oppose her. No, hers is a much less obvious danger. A more poisonous one. The kind one did not know even existed until it was far too late.

    There are very few who truly understood this about her.

    It might seem an odd friendship, the one that had formed so quietly between the roan mare from Nerine and the white mare from Tephra. But for the first time in a very long time, she had met someone who had truly wished for nothing from her. And that is perhaps more alluring to Heartfire than any other trait. The very thing that had brought her back, allowing her to develop something she hadn’t even known she was capable of: genuine friendship.

    For that reason, it doesn’t particularly surprise her when one of Ryatah’s daughter’s appears on Nerine’s border. Though she had taken notice of the girl a long time ago, out of respect for her friendship, she had chosen not to pursue any sort of interest in her. Of course, with Casimira hovering at the borders of her kingdom, it seems any such bets are off.

    She’s not perfect, after all.

    Hair tangled into wind knots, she tears herself from the cliff’s edge to come find the newcomer, curiosity coursing through her veins. She knows enough of the draconic woman to know she has no liking for Castile, and she wonders briefly if this is what had driven her to Nerine.

    Or perhaps something else entirely.

    “Casimira,” she greets softly as she draws close, her bright blue gaze sharp and focused. “There’s no need for you to linger on the borders. You are quite welcome in Nerine.”

    and they'll cut you like a weapon

    Heartfire
    #3

    CASIMIRA

    dragon-shifting daughter of ashhal and ryatah

    She is not left waiting for long, which comes as no surprise to her. In the distance she can see the other mare drawing nearer, and for a moment she feels an anxious quickening of her pulse. She wasn’t afraid of Heartfire — not the way everyone else should be, at least — but knowing the gift she possessed made her slightly uneasy. She knew Heartfire could see almost anything that she chose to, and while she didn’t think she would invade her vision, she wasn’t entirely sure. She has not done anything that she should be ashamed of – not in her equine form, at least. But her dragon form?

    That was an entirely different story.

    There were still mornings that she awoke to the taste of smoke and fire lingering on her tongue, when she could still smell the burnt trees – and sometimes the metallic tang of blood in her mouth.

    This fear of losing control was what still drove her into solitude, no matter how badly she wanted to be with Badden, or to go home to Tephra, she couldn’t risk it. The guilt of the destruction she left in her wake already ate her alive; the thought of accidentally hurting Badden was more than she could bear.

    When her pale blue eyes meet Heartfire’s sharp, piercing gaze, she tries to not wither beneath it. Not because she was afraid, but because when faced with someone else so sure of herself, so bold and capable, Casimira suddenly realized how she just...was not, anymore. She was far from weak, but she still felt so lost; she didn’t know who she was, or what she was supposed to be. She didn’t know if she should be strong enough to keep the dragon imprisoned forever, or strong enough to control it. Neither felt doable.

    Her head ducks slightly when Heartfire says she was welcomed here, shaking her white forelock from her pale blue eyes as she says with a quiet laugh, “I know, I just, um, I’m not really sure what I’m doing here.” She had taken a step forward, and though her gaze had drifted to one of the many cliffs in the distance, she focuses her eyes back on Heartfire. “I don’t think I want to go back to Tephra. I’ve been putting it off ever since the war.” Ever since I died, she means to say, but she does not clarify. Looking back to Heartfire’s bright, blue eyes, she is sure that she already knows. That she already knows Casimira had fought Castile and Ophanim, that Starsin had killed her. That by some strange miracle she was alive again, reborn from a single dragon scale.

    “Does that make me weak? Because I don’t want to go back, even though I was born there, even though I should want to be there?” She doesn’t realize that she is chewing on her bottom lip and again refusing to look the mare that she considered more like an aunt in the eye; afraid of her answer, afraid that she will confirm everything she already knew about herself.





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