"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
The trek here will become less frequent. The coast lies miles and miles from the forest with mountains, valleys, and a wasteland in between. It takes an entire day, perhaps longer, until Nayl is in the forest after having left the sound of lapping waves. The towering trees are the closest thing to the Jungle, but it lacks the humidity and the sisterhood. It isn’t home, but it’s the closest she will ever be to the tropical climate she had been born into.
Nayl grimaces in her solitude, but when she looks up her face is marbled stone. They – whomever crosses her path – can never know the pain in her heart. It would be a weakness in this great world of change. The Before is no longer here. They have entered The After where everything has been reborn, renewed. When Nayl looks around nothing is familiar although Beqanna has been recreated from what it had. Everything she – they – knew is gone. It would be best to move on and to forget the Jungle, but she can’t. It thrums in her veins just as it always has.
It was where she was born and her mother, grandmother, and many others beyond had rested their head and drew their first breath.
Underneath the sunlight Nayl’s body shudders with the memories and the mistrust that plagues her thoughts. Naga, their self-elected Queen. Hestia, the chiding mare as Advisor. Unable to think of them without bristling, Nayl sighs and roves her eyes across the forest, desperate to distract herself from the Coast’s politics.
Djinni has yet to choose where she will settle - or if she will settle at all.
The Coast has its advantages, but as of yet they all seem geographical. There is nothing particularly alluring about a group of women who mourn for a humid hellhole, unable to move themselves into the future.
Then again, there is little else in this new Beqanna that is appealing in any way.
Perhaps she'll stay there simply for lack of options.
To occupy herself, she follows the black and white mare from the shoreline to the forest, always barely within eyesight. She is not trying to hide, but nor is she quite ready for conversation. She has no reason to be following the near stranger, but nor is there any reason she shouldn't be following her either.
Eventually the other mare stops and Djinni continues forward, coming up beside the tobiano mare as an unlikely unwanted reminder of the very place that Nayl is trying to forget. "I like the ocean better," she says mildly, looking up at the tall canopy with an expression that is clearly unimpressed. "Though I suppose anywhere is better than standing atop that Mountain."
Nayl could hear the footsteps behind her, but she eluded the idea of someone following her. She convinced herself that it was the multitude of wanderers finding their place in the new world. There is no reason that a sister would bother with her or try to sink thorns into her bitterness. With the distaste and mistrust she expressed it was likely the sisterhood would reject her, shove her from their new borders for insubordination, but Nayl wouldn’t buckle to those whims so easily. The Amazons are in her blood and while many try to forge their own, new path, she instead follows her ancestors’ steps and seeks to enhance her bloodline further.
But her bloodlines mean nothing now with the Jungle gone. Their names are eradicated with their homeland and so Nayl is actually creating a new future, a new legacy she can only hope her descendants pursue.
Having taken pause in the forest, she lets her surroundings envelope her and momentarily distract her until there is a voice clawing into her eardrums. It’s vaguely familiar as she recalls it from Naga’s meeting at the coast. Breathing a sigh Nayl turns her head and settles her autumn eyes on Djinni. A humored grin etches across her lips and a low, airy chuckle quickly follows. ”The ocean isn’t bad,” she admits with a roll of her shoulders, ”It’s a scenery change I can learn to accept and enjoy.” It would take time as it isn’t what she is used to, what she was bred into. The Coast seems so vastly open and lacks the wall of trees that seemed almost as protection in the Jungle. ”That Mountain,” her eyes glance sideways to the towering sierra and it brings her expression to a snarl, ”is awful. It’s Beqanna holding our abilities in front of our faces, tormenting us.” She remembers how Naga groveled and begged for a home. It was embarrassing and disgraceful.
By keeping herself free of kingdoms, Djinni has unwittingly (or perhaps not, she is a clever thing) kept herself from being anything less than what she had been in the Desert. She was the firstborn of a king and queen madly in love, she was the oldest of a half-dozen long-legged siblings; she was a princess of the Desert.
Now there is no Desert, and Djinni has nothing to her name.
It is time to build something new, she knows, but she has yet to decide exactly where the foundations of her empire will begin. She has always known that someday she will be powerful, and that someday each mare, foal and stallion in Beqanna will know her name. Ambitious, perhaps, but the grullo mare has always been a little more than what meets the eye.
"I like the sand," she replies, and it is clear from both her fond expression and the sleek lines of her physique that Djinni never had a chance to not love the sand. Nayl is clearly of the same mind when it comes to the mountain, and the tobiano mare watches - more curiously than necessary - the snarl on the black and white's face as she looks up at the monstrous precipice.
"I think we're supposed to be learning a lesson," says the dove-grey mare, her tone far more mild than Nayl's. "I must admit,
I'm rather past the age where lessons can be drummed into my head so easily." She could be talking about the warm spring weather for all her quiet tone and expression show; there's no sign she's casually blaspheming against their very creator.
"What did you lose?" Djinni asks, turning her dark gaze from the mountain to focus suddenly, intently, on Nayl. She knows that the question is likely to be turned on her in time and that her answer will have no real substance. How can she explain that she has lost her very self? That the rings and chains were only the physical incarnation of the shimmering gold that once dwelt within her bones?
Nayl would not have minded beginning anew with different faces, different mindsets, but her heart beats for the sisterhood. It is all she has ever known, ever loved, and even as its walls crashed down she still held tightly onto the hope that the sisterhood would rise again.
It has, to her joy, but not in the way she had hoped.
The taste of the coast and the women is bitter in her mouth, but she never says this aloud. It could be read between the lines of her occasional trips away from them. Her loyalty has never wavered until now but she hesitates to accept it, to realize that perhaps this change was the beginning of something greater for her. This could be an opportunity to create a legacy instead of follow a leader she doesn’t yet trust like a lamb. But she doesn’t entertain the idea, not now when her heart is jumping back and forth uncertainly.
Djinni, who had been at the initial meeting in the coast, has different scents clinging to her coat. For a fleeting moment Nayl questions whether she is loyal to the Amazons but realizes how unimportant it is, not when her own mind is crisscrossing down different paths. She sighs. ”I’ve never seen sand until the coast,” but she knows that it isn’t the sand dampened by an ocean that Djinni is referring to, ”You were from the Desert?” She asks with a curious tilt of her head, unveiling her orange-gold eyes from underneath her forelock. ”I had never been there.” Regret suddenly grips her, as though ruined by not having traveled Beqanna before everything was destroyed.
”A lesson,” she repeats, nearly scoffing the mere idea of it. ”Perhaps some deserve the lesson and punishment, but not everyone.” She did nothing. She was born the way she was and attained something more after surviving some odd quest that remains muddled in her memory. Is it a crime to have been planted with these in the womb, to have worked for what she was? A puff of air escapes her in mild distaste. ”My mind was safe from prying,” she remembers the strong, defensive wall that encompassed her every thought. She had been safe, her ideas secluded. Now, however, she is exposed. ”I feel vulnerable now.” A shudder claws down her spine but she remains composed and continues with a fondness touching her voice. ”I was also able to bring anything to life – any inanimate object. It was a fun thing to do to pass time,” an airy chuckle tumbles from her lips like the rising tides of their coast. ”And you? What did Beqanna take from you?” The land took who they are, took their identities.
Her heart patters against her chest in anger, but her face never betrays her sense of loss and frustration.
That would lure Djinni in like nothing else quite could: the idea that they are starting new.
The other lands are. They are electing leaders, making plans, divising novel ways to succeed in this new Beqanna.
Naga had already been the leader by the time the grullo mare had begun to tag along, but it has already become clear that she is not quite the popular personality that Djinni had expected. Perhaps they had chosen her as their leader for other reasons - Djinni has not spoken to the black mare enough to discover what secrets she might be hiding.
She looks up at the mention of the Desert, her grey eyes meeting Nayl's orange ones with a faint smile.
"I was born there," she replies, "a very long time ago."
She has worn a dozen different faces since then, so many so that this one - the one she was born with - is almost a novel experience.
Djinni, born without a heartbeat, was brought back by her mother's tears and a trickster's benevolence. She knows that Beqanna was her creator, but Beqanna had also seen fit to destroy her before she had taken her first breath. Beqanna had broken her mother and father's heart, and it was Magic incarnate that had healed them. Djinni holds - no, held - that magic. Beqanna had taken it from her, taken what had never even been hers to begin with. The fury had come first, but Djinni is too old to rage for long; she has other plans.
"She took my birthright," Djinni replies, "She took my soul."
”And suddenly we realize how much we took for granted,” her breath is thoughtful and slow, her eyes burning into the ground at their feet. ”Here we – I – thought we had time to see all the kingdoms and do so much. With the snap of a finger our homes were demolished and dreams – aspirations – were cut.” There is no sense in the rage that is leaking through her blood and drilling into her bones. Being angry won’t solve anything or fix anything at all. The world toppled down and now they have to adjust and adapt; there is no other option.
Their eyes meet again and although Djinni’s voice is cool Nayl still hears the sharpness that cuts into their distaste of Beqanna’s sick humor. ”She took a piece of everyone’s soul,” she grumbles unhappily as she reflects on the weakness that initially enveloped her when it happened. Since then Nayl has strengthened herself, but she is still so very vulnerable. Pieces of her are missing, gaping holes in her soul. She wants the shield around her mind to rise again and to revive what objects come across her path. She wants power again, but she isn’t sure how, if, or when.
The only reassurance she has had is the Amazons, but even that is beginning to falter. Although the sisterhood is ingrained in her Nayl finds herself straying gradually and slowly. It isn’t the same. It isn’t what she anticipated. The Amazons is falling extinct. The one thing that has grounded Nayl is now slipping through her fingers and she hasn’t yet decided where to turn, who to tell.
”So the question we find ourselves facing is, what’s next?”
