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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


    [private]  Larva;
    #1
    Dillan’s heart wrenches with confusion. Her deep nutmeg eyes flicker across the changing of her surroundings, groping for familiarity. There was the field and the meadow, but beyond those two common areas, she is lost. There is no distant roar of a waterfall, no babbling Dalean brooks. She has circled twice now, adamant to find something – someone – but the new scents of this Beqanna assault her, drown her, with uncertainty.

    Memory fragments come and go, vivid images of a life she once knew. They are a balm for her gaping wounds wrought by loneliness and loss. Pictures of her children flicker across her mind every time she blinks, and then the friends that she witnessed their demise. Tipu, Nikkai. A chill runs the length of her spine; if she is here, then where are they?

    And then there is Larva, his scales catching the sunlight and his slit pupils staring adoringly at her. They were alive then, in love, but life has a way of ripping apart the beauty. Yet she still remembers how his coarse body pressed against hers in that fruitful life eons ago, how he hated himself and hoped his children would never have that same curse. They didn’t, much to his pleasure, not until later years just before Dillan succumbed to both age and heartbreak.

    He did not have those serpent features when she joined him in that eternal world, but touching him there was never the same as touching him on earth.

    Dillan’s heart wrenches again, but for hope instead of fear, for love instead of loneliness. The pang of unbridled passion swallows her in one, unexpected moment. It happens when she takes pause at a foreign border, and the smells reel her from reminiscing. Quickly blinking away the haze of her memories, Dillan peers across this strange wilderness where she both sees a volcano and hears the roar of a waterfall. She doesn’t know why her legs walked her here while her mind fell peril to reliving old stories, but something pulls at her. Glancing down at the grass tickling her legs, Dillan proceeds with eyes brightened by her curiosity as she instinctively follows the crashing of water.


    dillan




    @[Larva]
    #2
    i will be brutal
    He has learned quickly in this new world. Larva trades old stories with his grandchildren in exchange for new ones, and they always name a place he has never heard of. Sabbath devours his tales and asks a seemingly endless list of questions every time she’s nearby. But it’s always easier for him to tolerate the ones that are just like him – carnivorous, scowling, and brooding. She checks all the boxes and then some. It is spring, though, and she has new children to care for, leaving her little time to play his shadow.

    Today it is Meraki that stands too close and listens to his stories with wide eyes. Vulgaris would balk if he heard Larva explaining the war of the three kingdoms again, but he isn’t here to stop the old man. The little plant girl snickers when he gets to the part about trying to rip Saon’s face off and she wiggles in place, eager for a grim ending for the boy.

    But then he got away. He lived, and I haven’t seen him since,” he tells her with a lackadaisical shrug of his broad shoulders. She pouts and begins to demand more questions of him when he lifts his scarred head to follow the steps of a woman as she glides through Tephra like a dream. Meraki, startled by the interruption, bounds off into the jungle, away from strangers and potential danger.

    Meanwhile, Larva moves closer as he approaches from behind, until his hips slide against hers in gentle greeting. It almost makes his breath stop short in his lungs to feel her warmth again. But he’s touching his nose to her mane and breathing her in the way he has wanted to for so very long. This isn’t the Falls, he knows, but isn’t it close enough to bring the waterfall and Nikkai here to her? It fills his soul with joy to have it all back and then so much more.

    Dillan. I’ve been all over, looking for you,” he mumbles into her hair before finally lifting his head. “Vulgaris’s wife, Leliana, and their queen Isilya made this place beautiful and perfect. It’s like the Falls and the Amazons crushed into one paradise.

    He laughs, trying to imagine the headstrong Amazonian kingdom colliding with the gentle members of the Falls. But somehow Tephra has found the balance and it maintains a peaceful existence with the other kingdoms for now.

    For now.
    @[Dillan]
    #3
    A breath catches in her throat.

    It’s first at the beauty of the waterfall, no matter that it isn’t exactly from Dazzling.

    But the breath that holds, and doesn’t yet release, is what’s elicited by a most familiar touch.

    It doesn’t seem real, the warmth of his lips against her side. How long has it been since blood pulsed underneath their skins or nerves tingled by touch? A shuddered breath finally escapes, her tension melting by his voice alone. Words flirt with the edges of her pursed lips, but never fall. Frozen in this moment, Dillan shuts her eyes and merely smiles while leaning into the familiar, broad curves of his body. Electricity between them jumpstarts her every inch and revives everything she once thought lost in death.

    They held each other in that eternity, but it doesn’t equate to all of this, all of now.

    She turns her head slowly and lifts her chin so that she may look at his face for the first time since they’ve been revived. Still warm from his touch, Dillan is almost unwilling to peel her neck from him to search the gentleness of his eyes. Unable to help herself, she meets his gaze and everything inside her melts in adoration. ”Larva,” she breathes his name sweetly like when they were young and freshly fallen in love, ”I didn’t know if I would ever find you.” Unaccustomed to this new world, she wandered like a newborn through vast terrains that led her nowhere. Folding into him, with his muzzle buried into her mane, Dillan’s heart trembles with joy and love.

    He speaks of this place fondly, but with the recognition that it isn’t at all the Beqanna they left in their wake. A contemplative hum vibrates through her as she blinks and observes all that lies around them, taking careful note of every detail. It’s stunning, she wants to say, but her mind cannot deviate from the fact their son is here, as is his wife. ”Vulgaris?” She peers up at Larva, lifting her lips to caress his cheek. ”He possesses the scales you now lack,” a low, airy chuckle slips from her, but she admires him no less. ”I’ve missed him… our family…” there’s a pause to press a kiss to his warm, soft skin, ”is this our new home, Larva?” At least, they have pieces of their heart here, even if they left the others in the eternal.

    ”And what, exactly, do they call this mashup of Amazon Jungle and Dazzling Waterfall?” She jests, letting her memories of the old Beqanna open a path to the new.


    dillan




    @[Larva]
    #4
    i will be brutal
    Death had been comfortable and painless, easy to exist in. But it had lacked the warmth and the tangled emotions of being alive that always seemed to keep him coming back to this place. Touching her skin feels like the first time all over again and yet it is entirely familiar to him. It feels a lot like coming home, he thinks but does not say. He laughs gently when she finally speaks his name and voices her fears of never finding him in the strange new world.

    We’ll always find each other, even in the blackest night,” he reassures her as she leans into him. And he believes that to be true, that their fate is forever intertwined with one another even as the world bends and reshapes itself. Some things are permanent even if they are not tangible. After all, they had gravitated toward one another as naturally as anything in the afterlife. If their love could withstand even death and time, then it could hold up against anything.

    She echoes their youngest child’s name and he gently shakes his head.

    Vulgaris has shed his scales and fangs,” he explains, watching the jungle hum with life around them. “But that’s a story for him to tell you. Or his children maybe. He and Leliana have given us beautiful grandchildren.

    He smiles, and he would like to line them up to present to Dillan. She would be so thrilled at how wonderful and different they all are but his Tephran descendants scatter and skitter in gleeful chaos. There are still several he has not even met yet. Larva’s skin shivers briefly when she kisses him and he brings his green eyes to watch her when she asks if they’re going to live here from now on. Of course, he had intended for them to, but he realizes they do have options.

    I want to be close to our family. This place is warm and reminds me most of the world we knew. But I will follow you anywhere.

    And then he laughs quietly when she asks what this kingdom is even called. Of course he’d gotten ahead of himself and hadn’t even told her.

    This is Tephra. The only kingdom I’ve memorized the name of, so far,” he laughs, trying to recall the others.
    @[Dillan]
    #5
    ”I hoped you would say that,” because they are meant to be together, in both life and death. Dillan is incomplete without him, and she wonders how she existed before him. Her memory tries to recollect the pieces of her life she buried. Dempsey’s face just barely wavers in her vision, then Depp. There was joy, but also pain. It didn’t seem right with them, and she found herself forever craving her serpent husband.

    Shaking herself, Dillan dismisses a life she once knew and replaces the memories of past into a locked chest where they belong. Admiringly, she peers up at Larva, her heart beating in her chest for the first time in a century, if not longer. It flutters with the heat of his body – a sensation she never realized how deeply she missed – and with the explanation of their son. ”I wonder if he was as happy to be rid of them as you,” she rhetorically asks, remembering how Larva perceived it a curse and never wanted his children to suffer the same. ”I would love to meet them all,” while she says this, Dillan’s nutmeg eyes stare out toward the jungle and then the towering volcano. ”I would expect no less of beautiful,” there’s a fierce confidence residing in the honeyed notes of her words. They, together, have created stunning children, and it would be impossible for their continued legacy to mirror that. With a teasing grin, she asks, ”Are they grays, too?” They’ve always been a family of grays, with one or two contrasted with chestnut.

    There arises a lump of emotion, however. It chokes her for a moment as she stares distantly toward an unreachable horizon. A pause is all she can muster while she desperately seeks to suppress it, unwilling to show her vulnerability so soon to him after having just reunited. Her heart aches and her jaw clenches until she is able to swallow past the lump. ”Our legacy rests only on his shoulders, it seems. All of our other children are no longer around,” Shiya was the most recent to join them in the eternal, but they left her behind in order to return to the world of the living. Despair is still alive, as is Skaide. They have their own offspring, but Dillan is oblivious and speaks not of them, turning her attention back to Larva with a feeble smile across her lips.

    His confession revives her inner joy, and she nods in agreement. ”I love it here,” she admits, but doesn’t say that the only reason why is because of him. Wherever Larva is, she is home, even if it takes them back into death’s gates one day. ”I want to be close to them all, too. I want to see the lives we helped create, and to meet the woman that stole Vulgaris’ heart,” because she at least isn’t his sibling.




    @[Larva]




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