+- Beqanna (https://beqanna.com/forum)
+-- Forum: Explore (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=1)
+--- Forum: The Common Lands (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=72)
+---- Forum: The Ruins (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=114)
+---- Thread: [open] turn a page on a world that you don't need, anyone (/showthread.php?tid=30829)
turn a page on a world that you don't need, anyone - Ryatah - 03-20-2022
She is getting better, only her better is not good.
She is getting better, meaning the caution that had tried to take root in her chest had been overcome, like weeds encroaching until they strangle the entire garden.
The darkness that followed her home from the void—the kind that wove confusion in her mind and plucked at her idea of reality until her sanity began to fray—had tangled itself into the darkness that had always lived there, until the two were indiscernible and she forgot why she needed to be afraid. She forgot why she had taken shelter in Hyaline, why she never strayed far from Atrox, or from all the other things she has labeled as safe.
Because she has never been a thing made for safety.
Her body is a mapwork of scars, of the mistakes she has made and all the times she has chased that electric, live-wire high of danger when she should have been shying away from it. There is the mark on her hip designed by the god she refused to distance herself from, the uglier scar that now mars her chest from where Gale had gruesomely ripped out her heart, and all the other smaller markings in between that told a story of a time she lingered too close, pushed herself too far.
She is not meant for being safe, and she remembers that now.
It itches beneath her skin, the tension that crawls along her veins like a sickness, and she wonders if she can find a way to make it bleed.
So she goes out into the dark, because she forgets what it means to be afraid of it.
Or maybe she goes out into the dark because she remembers exactly what it means to be afraid of it.
She bypasses the lands that she is already familiar with, the ones that she has learned to navigate even when blind. Instead she finds herself in the newly uncovered place she has only heard whispers of, moving amongst the ruins almost as if a specter in the night. Only, she is far too bright—her entire body is lucent with that ethereal glow, trailing stardust from grand wings, and a halo of light brimming over her head.
Somewhere behind the cloud cover a sliver of moonlight tries to strain through, but she is not looking up at the sky. She is peering into the dark in front of her, wondering what her light might draw from it.
AND IT WAS REAL ENOUGH TO GET ME THROUGH —
BUT I SWEAR YOU WERE THERE
RE: turn a page on a world that you don't need, anyone - Ion - 03-23-2022
It’s not often he leaves the confines of his mountainous home. But as he had grown familiar with every ridge and every tree, he had begun to crave more. Had begun to desire something beyond the familiarity and the hunt. He had become so adept at disconnecting from his own emotion that he struggles to recognize it, but recognized or not, it still spurs him forward.
With the blood of his latest meal still staining his lips, invisible against the pitch of his fur, he steps from the foothills. It has been so long since he has tread these lands that he takes his time. The night is deep when he finds himself in unfamiliar terrain, twining amongst strange columns risen from the sea when the south had buckled.
Many might find themselves uncomfortable in the darkest hours of the morning, but Ion feels only the power of it coursing through his veins. Wren flits amongst the ruins, an occasional chirp breaking the stillness of the night air. Though he often sleeps tucked against Ion during the night, the thrill of something new had driven him to wakefulness. He is unusually brave for a creature that would be little more than a single bite to a creature like Ion, but living in the shadow of a predator had taught Wren much.
With a leap, Ion draws himself up on a large edifice overlooking the eerily still land. From this vantage, a glow brings his attention to another lingering within the ruins despite the darkness of the hour. Ion would normally ignore them, but he finds the face surprisingly familiar. Familiar because he has seen it within his own home.
Curiosity swelling, Ion leaps from stone to stone until he draws near enough to watch the winged woman comfortably. Though he tells himself it is only feline curiosity driving him to see what might have drawn her here, a distant part of him knows it is more than that. He has been alone so long that the pull of company, even during this hour when most would be sleeping, had proven irresistible.
Wren, realizing his companion had disappeared, swoops through the air above the woman as he loudly trills his alarm. It’s only when he finds Ion that he calms, fluttering to the panther with a relieved chirp. Ion releases a sharp chuff in response, abandoning any pretense at stealth as he rises from where he’d been crouched atop a stone to eye the pale mare warily.
ion
in the empty of the grave, only distant dreams remain
@Ryatah
RE: turn a page on a world that you don't need, anyone - Ryatah - 04-25-2022
There is a moment when she first sees the black coat and bright yellow eyes that her heart lurches, her pulse rushing in a quickened upswing before settling back into its usual rhythm.
She had not thought it was Atrox—she knows him too well in any and every shape—but the visceral reaction to seeing a panther poised above her had come anyway, a bone-deep thing that was now as much a part of her as breathing.
She knows too that this is not one of their children; he does not have the rose-gold rosettes of Iliana, the vivid eyes of Aislyn, or the smoldering frustration that Astin thought he could hide from her so well. She expects, then, to feel the vice-like grip of jealousy at the prospect of meeting a possible child of his that is not hers—and not Magnus—and is only mildly surprised to find that it does not come. She has never been an especially jealous creature; her life would have been far messier if she were. But, she also has never had what she has with Atrox before—someone that is exclusively hers, even if their road to becoming what they were now had been winding and broken.
But when she turns to fully face the stranger it is only curiosity in her dark eyes. Her trust in Atrox is infinite enough that she knows even if this is one of his children, it happened before she was something he could lose. Instead, she regards him with the same quiet caution she would most predators, and only asks him softly, “Who are you?”
AND IT WAS REAL ENOUGH TO GET ME THROUGH —
BUT I SWEAR YOU WERE THERE
@Ion
RE: turn a page on a world that you don't need, anyone - Ion - 04-28-2022
He has avoided company so studiously that, though he recognizes many of those who share his home by face, he knows almost none of them by name. So it takes him a moment to place her. The panther whose company she often shares is one of the few he had met. Once.
He hadn’t cared to learn more, but even with his limited knowledge, he recognized a mated pair when he saw them. Though he eschews it himself, he would have had to be a fool not to know it when he had been born to another such pair. For a moment, as Ion stares at her, he wonders what drives them to open themselves to so much potential pain like that.
He doesn’t put voice to those thoughts however, instead shaking his head before leaping from his perch. He had accepted he would never be like them. He couldn’t, not when half his soul had been ripped from him at birth. They were creatures made complete in a way he could never be. It’s useless dwelling on the cruelties of the fates that had stolen it from him.
Her question hangs in the air between them, but instead of answering, Ion wraps the night around him before shifting. The dark swirl that coalesces offers him protection in his most vulnerable moments as bones stretch and joints crack until his body finally settles into his more ungainly equine form. When it finally settles, he banishes the squirming shadows from around him before lifting his deep brown gaze to the pale mare.
As Wren trills in combined irritation and relief before settling on his withers, shudder runs down the speckled pewter of his skin. With the exception of the night sky that glimmers across his hip, he is as plain in equine form as he had been in feline (though he cannot know how distinctive anyone who has met his family might find his coloring regardless). In any case, he does not expect the woman to find him particularly good-looking in this form, nor is it why he had shifted.
“Ion,” he finally replies, his voice rusty with disuse. He stares at her for another long moment before admitting, “I’ve seen you before.”
ion
in the empty of the grave, only distant dreams remain
@Ryatah
RE: turn a page on a world that you don't need, anyone - Ryatah - 05-14-2022
The way he manipulates the night is so familiar that for a moment she wonders if Illum had shaped shadows into a panther-like form, but the stranger’s eyes chase that thought away. They are the signature feline yellow, brighter than the molten gold she had once been so familiar with, and she does not know if she is relieved or disappointed. She has not seen Illum in years, and while that self-destructive part of her whispers other things in the back of her mind she knows it is for the best.
She has found other ways to break herself, and did not need to drag him back into her gathering dark.
When the writhing shadows dissipate, though, it only causes new questions to rise. There are ghosts of both Heartfire and Illum etched into different parts of him, and his statement at having seen her before only adds to the confusion. “Ion,” she repeats his name thoughtfully, as if the answers might lay somewhere in those syllables, though of course they don’t. “I’m Ryatah,” she takes a step towards him, lets her eyes trace a path across him, taking inventory of all the things she finds familiar. There is the blue roan of his coat and the night-sky marking across his hip, and of course the way he had manipulated the shadows—all similarities that could not be denied.
But when she returns to his brown eyes—nothing like Heartfire’s vibrant blue or Illum’s smoldering gold—and recalls his previously shifted form it is enough to inspire doubt, though her stare never wavers from his face as she sorts her thoughts. “I don’t think we have met,” she says, not disagreeing with him, but also knowing that she would have surely remembered him had they formally crossed paths; perhaps not for the reason she is thinking, but at the very least because for all her flaws she had a way of remembering nearly everyone. “But you remind me of someone that I know.”
AND IT WAS REAL ENOUGH TO GET ME THROUGH —
BUT I SWEAR YOU WERE THERE
@Ion
RE: turn a page on a world that you don't need, anyone - Ion - 05-16-2022
He cannot know that his appearance would inspire memories, cannot know the familiarity she would find in the angles of his face and speckled blue of his skin. Instead he finds the recognition in her stare vaguely discomfiting beneath the curiosity it stirs. He has not spoken to any of his family in so long that he is unaware of just how distinctive their appearance is. He had been a lanky yearling the last time he had seen them, not yet grown into himself. Not yet able to discern the familial resemblance.
In truth, he would never have approached her if he had known. It is a reminder he does not want. Even now, years later, it is a wound festering deep inside him. One that he had chosen to bury instead of allowing to heal. He knew he had broken his parents' hearts when he left, but it had been easier than the pain of knowing he would never be complete. Seeing their grief had been a constant reminder, but out in the wilds, it had been so much easier to pretend forgetfulness.
The years had hardened him, but there are some things that one never truly forgets.
He watches her cautiously as she repeats his name, wondering why she tested it so carefully. Her name holds as few answers to him as his does to her. But then, he had never bothered to introduce himself despite the distant glimpses he had caught of her.
“No,” he offers bluntly in response to her hesitant declaration before reiterating, “but I’ve seen you.” It occurs to him then, belatedly, just how sinister that might sound. He should clarify, he knows, yet he does not. It hardly seems worth the bother.
Ion is a bit taken aback when she mentions he reminds her of someone. There is no disguising his confusion before he manages to smooth it from his features. He stares at her unblinkingly for a long moment before demanding, “Who?”
ion
in the empty of the grave, only distant dreams remain
@Ryatah