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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


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    only love could kill me; noah
    #1
    I rise from my scars. nothing hurts me now.

    Pieces of her past life—of her past self—lay scattered around Beqanna.

    In Nerine, there is a woman with the ability to play games with your vision. She is strong and clever and yet felt like a poison on Leliana’s tongue. In Tephra, there is a man made of mottled gold who was the only parental figure she ever had. He was brave and kind, and even now, she goes to him for the council she needs—even when he burns with more rage than consumes her. In Loess, there is a man with scales and serpentine eyes who breathed war and yet set fire to a broken heart. Somewhere—somewhere—there is a man with bone armor who clutches to her heart in a way she cannot name. 

    And in the Pampas, there is a mare who is the last tie she has to one of her only friends. 

    She is not sure if she comes because of the political games she must play now or because she feels a draw to the young girl she once met curled around Rhonen’s legs. Because there is a piece of her that has never stopped mourning his death and how she could not stop it. She could now, maybe. She could be strong enough to keep him alive, to protect him from the bodies that fell atop him. But she wasn’t then. She could barely seal a wound before another opened. She fell asleep to the sight of him dying for months.

    Even in this new life, with so much of her sealed away, she feels that sorrow and grief that feels like fury in her mouth. She feels the indignation of it all, the tears on her cheeks, the scream that scrubbed her throat raw. It causes a shiver to run up her spine as she appears on the border of the quiet herd land, her glowing golden eyes peering out into the darkness. Perhaps it was unwise to come to a land that still remained under Loess control—to a mare with alliances and loyalties she can only guess at—but there is a part of her now that hungers for the risk. That cannot stop herself from taking the gamble.

    And, if she was honest with herself, there is a quiet piece of her that just wants to see Noah.

    To look in her eyes and see Rhonen reflected back at her.



    @[Noah]
    [Image: avatar-1975.gif]
    the heaviness in my heart belongs to gravity
    #2

    that's all there is

    There is very little out there to link the little roan mare to her past. It had almost always been just Rhonen and Noah – he’d kept it that way, and she had never really known any differently. There were the vaguest memories of her mother: green eyes that she knows she inherited, a voice that occasionally haunts her dreams, an impression of someone vivacious and a little bit crazy. Other than that and a steady stream of strangers, her father’s quiet insistence that she needed to be able to talk to strangers, there had been only one person to whom he’d intentionally introduced her, with whom their interaction had been more than the passing of ships.
     

    Most of the strangers they interacted with, however briefly, were quickly repulsed by her father’s careful eyes and sharp words. Even when the daggers he threw missed their marks intentionally, nobody stuck around long enough to figure it out. Nobody except her. The brown and red mare sticks out in Noah’s mind because Rhonen had known her name, but more because she had not shrunk away from father’s demeanor, but instead leaned into their isolation; leaned in and even softened some of those rough edges. Like a stone tossed in the ocean until it is round and smooth, a few stolen moments in the meadow had softened some part of Rhonen that even Noah had trouble seeing.
     

    That sort of thing stuck with you – enough that she’d known Leliana on sight on that terrible day. Noah remembers every face, every moment of the day Rhonen died. She relives it in her nightmares, and some part of her subconscious searches every new face she meets for the signs that it is someone who played a part in the worst few moments of her life. The faces of those who had been trying to help are mostly blurrier – but Noah had seen Leliana. Been aware of her.
     

    Just like today – she’s aware of her almost as soon as she enters the Pampas. Of course, part of that is because the little herdland Noah has carved out for herself is very quiet. There are few residents; not because she wouldn’t welcome them, but because she’s quiet and shy and not great at recruiting. But perhaps part of it is because they are aware of each other. She likes to believe that some people are connected in the universe, more than others. So she wanders that way, quiet, but a peaceful quiet rather than a fearful one. Leliana isn’t a particularly tall mare but Noah is quite short, pony short, and her quiet nature only enforces the impression of her small size. Still, she offers the not-stranger a smile that doesn’t quite reach into her nightmare-haunted eyes (yet it’s still a true smile) and a whispered greeting. “Hello.”

    noah



    @[leliana]
    #3
    I rise from my scars. nothing hurts me now.

    Leliana feels pieces of her rush forward into her chest at the sight of Noah. Bits and pieces, jagged around the edges, the cloud her golden vision and cause her pulse to stutter. It isn’t enough to drown the woman who now keeps her hand on the steering wheel, but it is enough to soften the edges of her molten face—enough to dim the glow of her eyes, keeping her stoic and solemn but not unkind, not ungiving.

    “Noah,” she says the girls name quietly and isn’t sure whether she should mourn with her, or apologize, or say nothing at all. What can you say in a moment like this? How can you admit the regret that you have worn so heavily for so many years? The fact that she loved her father in the only way that she could; that he gave her peace in a moment of turbulence and she hadn’t been able to repay. She hadn’t saved him.

    That fraction of doubt pulls at the corners of her crimson mouth, crumples her brow just slightly. But the second that it shows, it is smoothed over, the magic rippling beneath her skin enough to quiet it.

    “I have thought about coming to see you for a long time,” she says, because she doesn’t know how to explain that it wasn’t her that thought about it but instead the past version of herself. The version of herself that feels as disconnected as the stars. She knows—she remembers—the long nights thinking about Rhonen and his young daughter. She remembers the tears and the pain and the ache that came with it. But only intellectually. The same pain only echoes against the borders of her now. It doesn’t strike.

    Still, she dips her head slightly, orchids spilling over her shoulder. “You have grown up well.” She finds the other mare’s gaze again, the depthless, molten gold studying the lines of her face.

    “Rhonen would be proud, I think.”



    @[Noah]
    [Image: avatar-1975.gif]
    the heaviness in my heart belongs to gravity
    #4

    that's all there is

    It’s almost strange, to hear her name on another’s lips. She can easily count how many people even know her name – Wolfbane and Lepis, Sinner and Mary, Kora and Leander, Castile. Maybe a few more individuals she’s met in passing The vast majority of the time, people don’t talk to Noah. They go around the Pampas, or wander in and admire the flowers and wander out. There had been some influx when she’d held a safe sanctuary against the Plague, but in time even that had faded.


    Noah had been forced to finish growing up incredibly quickly. Leliana has managed to create a new identity for herself, to lock away a past self, and maybe it would have been easier if Noah had figured out how to do that. If she could have learned to lock away baby Noah, maybe she wouldn’t still see the destruction of her world behind her closed eyes more nights than not. After all – Carnage got a foothold for the Plague because Noah and the others foolishly sacrificed to the heart of his plan. And Rhonen was in Pangea to be attacked because Noah had led him there. She couldn’t save him from the mob, and so the bad decisions pile up and the nightmares are still harsh.


    Maybe Leliana should blame Noah for Rhonen’s death. Noah does.


    There’s complements offered and she isn’t sure how to respond, not with the darkness threatening above her again. A big part of her is ecstatic to see the mare, but the remaining part of her is frightened. In the end, she can’t take the complements, the reassuring tone of voice, the depth of the older mare’s bright gaze. “He would have liked to have known you were there, in the end. That he had a friend, after all.” They both known Rhonen didn’t really believe he was worthy of having friends – he thought the seal inside of him made him lesser. His sharp eyes and sharper tongue had been a wall build to keep everyone else on the outside, and the privilege of being inside the wall will be something they will always share, the exalted few.


    “It was all my fault. My choices that led him there.” It’s such a soft whisper that perhaps a regular mortal wouldn’t hear it – but Leliana is no longer a regular mortal, so surely she will hear it. Or simply know it.

    noah



    @[leliana]




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