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  • Beqanna

    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


    She sells seashells by the sea shore // ratty pony
    #1
    The river is a long way from home, yet it feels like the place to be today. She swam most of the morning to reach the southern deltas where salt and fresh water melded into brackish murk. In the spring time, this area would be flooded with snowmelt. Now though, summer was at its zenith, and soon would be slipping into a cooler autumn. The broad plain was muddy and shallow, coating the sea mare's legs to the knees in thick silt. 

    She was thankful to reach the river proper, where water flowed in one united current deeper than the flood plain allowed for. She stood in a slower eddie a ways upriver, letting the flow wrap her legs in a cleansing embrace. 

    It was pretty here, with the deep emerald trees spinning the occasional leaf into the river. Golden sunlight filtered through them to dapple the water and her own pearlescent scales with warmth and shadow. After her swim, it was wonderful to rest in the summer heat. 

    She'd had a lot on her mind lately. A long swim and a nice quiet afternoon seemed to be exactly what she'd needed to get her spirits lifted. Maybe she'd wander a bit later, try to find friends or just something she'd never seen before. Anything was possible on an afternoon like this. 

    @[ratty]
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    #2
    She's running, for a moment, racing across the white sand, palm trees overhead and the sunlight flashing through them from a sky as bright as a bluebird's wing, running with a strange creature with antlers and claws and cloven hooves. The sun is warm on her back, still muddy and singed and a bit sore where lava hit skin instead of mud. Sweat stings on her flanks, but they keep running, escaping from the army of creatures behind them, outpacing them at last. The sick of fear is fading, bleeding from her belly with every stride put between them, and then, in an instant, in a snap, she is back in familiar territory. The mediterranean landscape disappears midstride and her feet hit gravel roughly, abruptly, stopping so short that she trips and crumples, rolling forward and into the shallows of a river.

    Of the river.

    The yearling is still for a long moment but for the fast rise and fall of her ribs, the flare of dark nostrils, exposing the wet skin within that glistens red and bright with her run. The river water in the pool she has come to lie in is warm with the late-season sun. As her breathing slows, Popinjay shuts her eyes, the muscles of her legs are pounding, and in the absence of the drumbeats of her own hooves, a hum croons in her ears, flavoring the sound of birdsong and rushing river-water with its own off-pitch tone.

    At last, she sighs heavily and lifts her head from its pillow on the pebbles worn smooth by centuries rolling through the river. She bites at a damp flank, causing the last bit of flaking mud to fall away and drift to the bottom of the pool. The sweat has washed away, only the small burns remain, splashed messily up her left haunch and across her back. They itch, healing already, somehow, through whatever magic pitched her back to her home, but when her teeth rake across them, white pain flashes across her vision. She leaps to her feet with a gasp and a squeal, throwing water and rocks in all directions. That is when her eyes finally fall on Aquaria, and the pale mare is so unlike anything Popinjay has seen before that for a moment she wonders if her journey has ended. One ear turns slowly back, then forward again sharply.

    "Hey!" she shouts abruptly, "Hey, you don't have any riddles that need solving, do you?"

    @[Aquaria]
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    #3
    It's with a bemused expression that the sea mare watches as a creature all legs and mud tumbles from seeming thin air into a shallow place in the river. For a moment all she can do is stare as the little thing splashes and shimmies and trembles with agitation in the cold water. 

    Her eyes widen as they meet the frantic yearling's gaze, unsure of how she had stumbled into this situation. Moreso when the little one collected herself enough to ask if she had... A riddle? She blinked, trying to think of any reason that would be the first thing someone asked her after appearing from literal nowhere. She was drawing blanks. 

    "Um... No? I don't think so." She blinked again, growing very worried for the young horse. She was rough looking and jumpier than a dolphin in the morning. "Hey... Are you okay, seabean?" She asked, stepping cautiously nearer. She spoke low and pleasant, as if talking to a baby sea cow. 

    Old wounds scattered the girl's coat, leaving hairless patches of angry red skin exposed. Maybe the cool water felt good on those hurts, but they still looked painful to the nereid. What on earth had this girl find though! Only to be dumped into the river headlong. 

    @[Popinjay]
    Reply
    #4
    No...

    Not the other place, then. No, this is real life - had it not been real before? She remembers it like a dream, but the ache of burnt skin suggests otherwise, and, distracted, Popinjay curls her body, stretching a wriggling upper lip to graze the furthest forward of the wounds. Definitely real! She whips back around as the pale mare approaches, ears up and eyes bright. A grin spreads across dark lips

    "Oh, I'm fine," she exclaims, rolling her head on limber neck and then closing the remaining space between them, "are you okay? You look confused."

    Water droplets cling to her eyelashes and the whiskers around her muzzle, sparkling like diamonds in the high sun, and the grin grows mischievous. She can bear her own curiousity no longer and reaches out with quick teeth to nip at the translucent fins hanging down over the mare's neck in place of a mane.

    "Are you a fish? Maybe that's why you're so confused. You should be more in the water. The fish I know don't do very well in the sun, even only half out. But I can help!" And, so saying, she paws once, begins to crow-hop and leap tight circles through the silvery, flowing, water of the river, crashing each foot down with a splash until both horses are fully soaked.

    "You're welcome," she stops with a critical frown, "That won't help for very long though."

    Then, good deed done, she shakes, wringing her entire body as a dog might, spreading a fine mist around her, shakes until the short hairs of her coat curl and the longer ones one her mane try to stand straight. She stops to drink, as if it has been days. Drinks so long that perhaps Aquaria will think she has been forgotten completely, but without pausing between the actions, Poppy lifts her muzzle from the water, cooler where it runs than the still pool she had lain in before, and lifts it up to brush against the fishmare's own, a soft breath escaping from flared nostrils.

    "It's okay that you don't have a riddle. I'm tired of riddles, anyway."

    @[Aquaria]
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    #5
    Every motion the younger horse makes is quick and decisive. She steps as lightly as a fawn, with far more exuberance than Aquaria had ever seen in another horse. A bubble of laughter escaped her lips as the girl's question. "I guess I am," she admitted ruefully. "It's not every day I see a horse fall out of the sky." Well. Technically that was true, although it was surprisingly not the first time. 

    But that didn't seem to satisfy the peppy creature. The pale mare held still as the girl mouthed her mane experimentally. Pressure tugged along her crest, but she didn't feel much else beside that. It didn't seem like any marks had been left in the tough membrane anyway. And then the splashing started. 

    Before Aquaria had time to protest, she find herself in the midst of the splash zone. It didn't feel bad, getting rehydrated. But it wasn't as critical a thing as it seemed to be interpreted as. She blinked the excess moisture from her eyes, sneezing once when the water hit the back of her throat. "Hey, uh, thanks... But I'm fine, I promise. I'm only a little bit fish. Enough horse to survive on land, really truly." 

    A longer bout of laughter left her when the girl shook herself out, adding an extra layer of mist to her already drenched scales. And then need seemed to take over want as she dropped her face to the water. Aquaria watched curiously as the girl swallowed mouthful after mouthful of cold water, seemingly insatiable. The fin mare quirked a smile, imagining the girl filling up from her hooves all the way up to her ears. Maybe then she'd be satisfied. 

    But it took less time than that before the girl lifted her head to inhale. And then put her dripping muzzle right against Aquaria's. Now she really was confused, wet droplets clinging to both of their skins. And then they were back to riddles. 

    A hum of uncertain noise left the mare as she tried to decide what to say. "Well. I've got no riddles, as I said before. I'm sorry you've had such a time with them lately. But if you don't mind my asking, who are you?" She blew her own hot breath over the girl's now water-cooled skin. 

    @[Popinjay]
    Reply
    #6
    Who is she?

    Popinjay stills, but only for a moment. Almost everybody in Taiga knows who she is, and everybody she's met outside of Taiga has not cared, so the idea that she would have to introduce herself, that it is expected and normal and the fact that she hasn't might be considered rude has not even occurred to her. And, truth be told, it still hasn't. Not really, not in a meaningful way. Curious dark eyes find the finned mare's own and stop there, the train of her thought switching tracks immediately and without a logical transition. 

    "Oh, I like your eyes!" They remind her of Lethy's eyes, purple and bright. She grins her wild grin and tears her muzzle away from the pale mare to play in the water, wiggling her outstretched upper lip so that it splashes softly in the shining current where they stand. Not far away, silver minnows dart between the rocks, avoiding the larger predators that stalk the waterway, the sunfish and turtles and trout. She wonders...

    "Since you're part fish, can you talk to them? My name is Popinjay, but I'm not actually part bird. I talk to them sometimes, but they don't ever talk back."

    She thinks this might be something worth rectifying at some point, but she has not really decided how. Lethy had told her stories of Fairies and Mountains, but she has not tried to go there, and while she is convinced now that her recent travels have been magical, they were certainly not on a mountaintop. She lifts her head, turning her gaze from the fish to the peak that is not so distant today. From Taiga you can't ever really see it, as much for the trees as the distance. The skin on her flanks burns with the memory, but it is not too bad and the only tell that anything is amiss is her left ear twisting back towards the sores. She remembers what the other mare had said earlier.

    "Did I fall out of the sky? I bet that looked funny. It felt funny, we were running across a beach of white sand and then I was here instead. I hope Voracious is okay. Do you-- you probably don't know him. That's kind of a weird name, Voracious. Is your name weird? I know! You tell me what your names is, and I'll let you know if it's weird."



    Popinjay
    She was not quite what you would call refined


    @[Aquaria] oh my weird little duckling
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    #7
    She was starting to have to work at keeping up with the girl, her eyes tracking every shift in the girl's thoughts. They flickered across her face in a kaleidoscope of emotion. It was dizzying, and yet the sea mare found herself smiling. Never before had she met a horse so absolutely filled with life. Not even hey little niece had quite as much vim and vigor as the bright filly currently flipping through topics. 

    "Thank you. And er, no. Well I do talk to them, but they don't usually talk back." She paused, making sure she'd caught the girl's name in all the words that had preceded it. Popinjay. What an absolutely fitting name for the sprightly thing. 

    She also remembered something that the filly, Popinjay, would probably appreciate. "You know, my home has birds that do talk back. Flocks of parrots, they're as brightly colored as butterflies and they are very talented mimics." The parrots had taken her some getting used to when she'd first returned to the island, but now she thought of the chattering things as fondly as the fishes in her coral garden. 

    And then Popinjay's thoughts seemed to track in a different direction entirely, to the place she had so recently arrived from. The story behind her ragged appearance was coming out in bits and pieces, forming a puzzle that still didn't quite make sense. What on earth was a Voracious? 

    "I've never met anyone named Voracious. Is that who got you burned?" She asked, then shook her head, dismissing her own thoughts. Why would the girl be worried about some thing or some one who had hurt her? Instead she smiled again, and tossed her flippy membranous mane to snap smartly. "Well anyway, my name is Aquaria, of Ischia. Is that a strange one?" She asked, wondering just exactly how the moniker would be interpreted. 

    @[Popinjay]
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