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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


    [open]  waking up to ash and dust - anyone
    #1

    a n o m a l y.


    Pangea was not far from the meadow, but until now the girl had not dared to cross the border. She wasn’t sure what it was that emboldened her so this morning, but she found herself enthralled with the prospect of something new and different.

    The girl had no way of knowing that her childhood had been atypical, even by Beqanna’s standards. She did not know that not all children were hidden away - raised in isolation with bodyguards standing by.  She did not know that it was strange that no one had ever touched her - she had never felt another equine’s skin against her own. To Anomaly, this simply was the way things always had been. How could she possibly know any different.

    She wasn’t sure what to expect of the meadow - for it was already so different than the only place she knew. Pangea was a land of carved stone and only the hardiest of plants. The sandstone canyons were beautiful - though many found them to be bleak and barren. Not Anomaly. There was always something to be discovered - tucked away in the cuts and curves within the canyons.

    But here? Here the world was green and filled with life and colors she could hardly believe were real.  A sound that could only be described as glee escaped her as she bounded through the long grass.  She wasn’t sure how long she ran, but the fatigue had settled in her bones.  So the girl found a particularly lush cospe of flowers and settled herself among the blooms. Her eyes fluttered closed and she dozed amongst the flowers and sunshine.

    However when she awoke, she nearly recoiled with shock with what she saw. All of the flowers surrounding the girl had withered, their stalks bleached and tinged red.


    i'm breathing in the chemicals.

     
    WARNING: 
    Anomaly is radioactive. 
    Those that touch her may experience metallic taste, nosebleed, nausea, headache, hair loss and/or skin lesions. 
    Symptoms become worse with prolonged exposure and onset is accelerated when exposed to her blood.
    Reply
    #2
    In the absence of his siblings, Larrikin is prone to wandering. There is plenty of fun to be had in Sylva when he has company, but the overo boy has long since explored all the good nooks and crannies of the fire forest. Today, with none of his brother and sisters making an appearance and Roue still too small to do anything really exciting, Larrikin finds himself in the Meadow. He’s been here once or twice, and he manages to look almost like he knows what he is doing as he picks his way across the sea of waving grass. The dry strands tickle at the ragged patches of white along his otherwise black belly, those paint markings inherited from his father overwhelmed by the deep inky black of his mother. Starsin is paler now, and Larrikin will be lighter someday too, but for now the only sign of that graying to come is a subtle brightening around his face and a lavender tip to his otherwise black tail. Otherwise he is just black and white, tinted only slightly lilac by the glow of his halo.

    No one here is doing anything exciting either, he decides. There’s just grazing and talking mostly, though the boy casts a few disgusted looks at the horses having a little too explicit thoughts of their conversation partner. He gets enough of that from his parents; he doesn’t want to think about it here, not when he is still fairly certain that girls are still infectious.

    The sight he stumbles on feels serendipitously like proof of that.

    The scrambling girl has clearly done this – whatever this is. Larrikin has not ever seen anything like it before. He steps forward curiously to poke at a withered flower with his black nose. It smells like the ground after rain but sharper, and it makes his stomach curl unpleasantly, so he pulls away after a rather brief inspection of the dead grass. Now he looks at the grey and black filly, who is not so far in age from Larrikin himself.

    “How’d you do that?” The overo asks curiously, blinking his long-lashed eyes. “Was it magic?”

    @[Anamoly]
    Reply
    #3

    a n o m a l y.


    She scrambled to her feet, and in her panic was less than graceful in doing so.  Her eyes were wide and her breath came in short panicked bursts. Clearly she had done this. But how?  The unanswered questions seemed to muddle her mind, and she couldn’t tear he gaze away from the remnants of what had once been seemingly healthy flowers.

    It took her another moment to realize that she was not the only witness to this conundrum. The stranger seemed to be around her age, which put her at ease. Yet he wasn’t like anyone she’d ever seen in Pangea, which wasn’t saying much. She got the impression that for the majority of her life she had intentionally been kept away from others. Of course she had never asked her mother directly, but none of the other children in Pangea had xenomorph bodyguards as she had.

    “I - I don’t know. I don’t think it’s ever happened before,” she said, trying to keep the panic out of her voice and failing.  She had little way of knowing if such a thing had happened before. She usually slept on the stone floor of the caves carved into the sandstone canyons in Pangea.  And the flowers and foliage there were not lush and vibrant like they were here.

    “I don’t have any magic. At least I didn’t think so,” she said, uncertainty coloring her voice and making the words seem meek. She turns her wide eyes - glowing eerily - towards the boy. “Have you ever seen anything like this before?” Perhaps he had the answers that she did not.  Or perhaps he was just revolted by her already. The thought made her heart sink in her chest.

    “I’m Anomaly, by the way,” she adds, feeling a little bit foolish. She hoped, fleetingly, that he wouldn’t be scared away. After having lived her first year in relative isolation, she certainly wasn’t skilled in the realm of socialization.  She had so many questions, but kept her dark lips pressed tightly shut to keep them from escaping in a rush.


    i'm breathing in the chemicals.

     



    @[Larrikin]
    WARNING: 
    Anomaly is radioactive. 
    Those that touch her may experience metallic taste, nosebleed, nausea, headache, hair loss and/or skin lesions. 
    Symptoms become worse with prolonged exposure and onset is accelerated when exposed to her blood.
    Reply
    #4
    His family’s forest has never been an especially crowded place, but the idea of the solitude Anamoly knows would be foreign to Larrikin. Though he is here in the Meadow only because he could not find his siblings, their absence is only a temporary thing. They will come back eventually; and if he really needed them they would come back immediately. This surety in his world is part of what has made him so bold – though his genetics are surely a little to blame as well. He gets just a taste of that sense of solitude from her scrambled thoughts, just enough to put together that even if it had happened before that it was possible no one was ever around to see it.

    There is a strange twist of sympathy in his chest, but Larrikin is young and it does not last long. It’s quickly overtaken by more exciting things, like the fact that the girl is asking if he’s seen anything like this before.

    “Nope!” he replies, quick and sure. The overo is no expert in plant death, but there is no telling that from the decisive certainty in his voice.

    “You’ve got weird eyeballs,” he tells her. “They’re glowing like a lightning bug’s butt. Did you know?”

    Larrikin’s intention isn’t to be cruel, just an observation. If she doesn’t know how she did such an obvious thing as kill the grass, perhaps she also doesn’t know that her eyes are glowing too. It’s not glowing itself that is unusual – Larrikin himself has a literal halo and a myriad of lavender constellations on his hide – but he’s never seen it in someone’s eyes before.

    “I’m Larrikin,” he adds, “but you can call me Larry. Do you want to play tag?”

    @[Anomaly]
    Reply
    #5

    a n o m a l y.


    ”Hm…” she mused, as she stared down at the wilted, bleached flowers. “Maybe they’ll grow back,” she added, doing her damndest to be optimistic about the fate of the once-beautiful plants.

    “Hey!” she yelled, feigning hurt at the fact that he’d said her eyes look like a bug’s butt.  She knew about her eyes, of course, but didn’t volunteer the fact that it wasn’t just her eyes that glowed. Her blood wasn’t like everyone else's, or at least no one she knew.  The thought was fleeting, and she theatrically furrowed her brows before she answered. “Well your markings glow! How is that any different than my eyes!?” she replied, with mock indignation, but dissolved into giggles sooner than she should have if she meant to keep up the act.  She managed to get control over the giggles long enough spit out one of the things she’d wanted to ask him right away.  “Do you have any magic, Larry?” she asked - her (weird) eyes wide with anticipation. Apparently she could kill plants - but maybe he could do something cooler and more useful.

    At the prospect of playing a game, her heartbeat quickened. “I’ve never played tag,” she said, her voice somewhat quiet again. She doesn’t know why she feels embarrassed, but she does. It’s very clear from even this short conversation that she has been deprived of much throughout her childhood.  “I know how to play, though!” she added, quickly, to ensure he didn’t think she’s too stupid to figure out how to play tag.  She’s just...never had someone to play with before now.  That’s not to say she didn’t have siblings - she had many, and there were definitely other kids in Pangea.  She’d seen them before but....she wasn’t the most approachable playmate when accompanied by her mother’s extraterrestrial bodyguards. Or so she rationalized to herself.

    “So, am I supposed to chase you or am I supposed to run away?” she asked, determinedly, her little feet dancing in place and ready to take flight.


    i'm breathing in the chemicals.

     



    @[Larrikin]
    WARNING: 
    Anomaly is radioactive. 
    Those that touch her may experience metallic taste, nosebleed, nausea, headache, hair loss and/or skin lesions. 
    Symptoms become worse with prolonged exposure and onset is accelerated when exposed to her blood.
    Reply
    #6
    Looking down at the still-glowing and certainly-dead plants, Larrikin gives a noncommittal “Hmm,” in response to her optimistic hope that the flowers might grow back. Perhaps a new plant will grow back, he thinks, but these are most definitely dead. Before he can more full dash her dreams, she’s taken offense to his observation about her eyes. Preparing to defend himself and his beautiful markings, Larry takes a deep and indignant breath, only to find that Anomaly is laughing and had not been serious about it at all. The boy’s grin is a little reluctant to return (he is very good at dishing out and not yet good at taking) but when it does it is just as bright as before.

    Anomaly asks if he has any magic, and Larry shrugs.

    “A little bit.” He tells her, before his dark coat ripples and lightens, becoming a mirror image of Anomaly’s own. “That and some other stuff. My mom and dad are really good.” Good at magics, he means, but everything else as well. Dad has been awfully quiet of late and Mom more likely to shatter things, but Larry’s siblings have reassured him that things will soon go back to normal. To not think of them, he decides to demonstrate. Of course, he’s not especially skilled yet, and his attempt to shatter a nearby branch fails entirely.

    At least he didn’t tell her he was going to do it, Larry thinks. Now she won’t know that he failed.

    He has almost enough time to react to her admission of never playing tag with a frown, but the defensive answer she gives is confirmed by the thoughts she has, and Larry shrugs it away. Maybe her inexperience will help him win, he thinks. He’s always a little slower than his siblings (younger legs, and all that), but surely he can outrun this grey filly. She doesn’t look much older than he is, after all.

    “You can run first,” he allows, bobbing his white muzzle excitedly. His own feet prance and paw at the dark soil. “I’ll even count to five and give you a head start!”

    @[Anomaly]
    Reply
    #7

    a n o m a l y.


    She watches him with the curiosity of one who had been sheltered - her green eyes wide with interest.  And her eyes widen when he changes color right before her eyes to the point where he looks like her.

    “Wow!” she exclaims, the awe evident in her voice. ”That’s awesome!!”  She reaches out to touch his newly-transformed skin, but stops just a hair's breadth from his shoulder when it dawns on her that this may be rude. She quickly tucks her nose to her chest, letting out a little giggle as she does so.

    “My mom’s good at magic too. I wish I was more like her,” she says, wistfully.  She’s seen her mother do incredible things.  She wished, deep down, she could be that skilled in something.  But her father? She’d never known her father. She assumed she must have one, but her mother had never mentioned him. Her mother’s creatures were the first faces she’d seen when she hatched form her egg deep within the sandstone caverns ov Pangea.

    But the potential of a game drew her back to the present and sent a shiver of excitement down her spine. ”Okay!” she near shouts, excited at the prospect that the game is really happening. She takes a deep breath and steels herself - letting concentration and determination wash over her. ”Okay. I’m ready,” she says, very seriously.

    ”Okay! Catch me if you can!” she shouts, bounding away across the meadow without even hesitating to see if he actually gave her a head start.


    i'm breathing in the chemicals.

     



    @[Larrikin]


    oof this took forever. do not feel obligated to respond to this super late post. unless larry wants some stylish radiation burns. LOL
    WARNING: 
    Anomaly is radioactive. 
    Those that touch her may experience metallic taste, nosebleed, nausea, headache, hair loss and/or skin lesions. 
    Symptoms become worse with prolonged exposure and onset is accelerated when exposed to her blood.
    Reply




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