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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


    Suddenly I'm Miss Midwest (Celeste)
    #1

    Midnight Checkout Queen

    Once upon a time she had been a psuedo-Princess of the Dewdrop Deserts, that magnificant sand Kingdom of old. She'd been a magician, a master-crafter (oh how she had revelled in the things that occcursed in the Slave Pens when she was younger), a demonlitionist and the lover of The Chamber War General named Chain. Once upon a time she had been someone....now? She was a no one.

    Seraph shifted uncomfortably in the spherical bubble that was her existance. She didn't know how long she'd been cocooned here, in this void of space and lightning and wind, but where once had been room to move was now nothing but aether pressing against her. A roaring pressure grew beneath her, wordless voices crying, screaming and shouting. At what, she didn't know, but with the tearing sound one hears when a cloth is ripped into two, the lining of her bubble tore, the pressure rushing in to fill the now vacant air as time compressed and space warped before her vision faded into blackness.

    Bird-song echoed through her mind and stalks of grass tickled the velvety skin inside her nostrils as an autumn wind, tinged with the slightest chill of winter, blew its merry way across the lands of Beqanna and fingers of air passed over the drenched form of Seraph, curled almost nose to tail half off and half on the grassy banks of a turbulent river. Mahogany eyes forced themselves open against the mid-morning sunlight before her mind registered the chill water and she lurched forward ungainly, almost face planting into a patch of wildflowers but catching herself at the last moment.

    Her black coat seemed to drink in the sunlight as she looked around, almost certain she had ended up in Beqanna but the lay of the land seemed different, where once landmarks had been crystal clear there was now something entirely different. Fluffing her feathers out to take advantage of as much sun as possible, she moved off from the river, ears flicking back and forth as she surveyed the surroundings, needing that confirmation of where she had ended up and as she took a moment to revel in a ray of sunlight beaming directly across her closed eyes, enjoying the warmth, she bumped into a solid wall of flesh.

    "Can you tell me where I am by chance?"

    S E R A P H




    [I have no idea where I was going with this but yay for brushing off the dust]

    @[Celeste]
    Reply
    #2

    Celeste remembers little of what came before. (But, then, isn’t that the benefit of death? As a Shade, the world fades to gray and what once was becomes as immaterial as the spirit that roams the halls of the Afterlife.) The black mare doesn’t even remember dying. She just remembers the haze and the wandering; her clouded mind feeling like she has misplaced something and turning corners in the Land of the After did nothing to jolt that memory.

    Who had she been before?

    There are bonds there, things that chain parts of her soul and become born again when Celeste re-draws her first breath. Daughter, some cornerstone of her remembers. Mother, a bedrock part of her soul adds. Her dark brow furrows but she can’t recall the faces through the fog. Distant, disorganized memories that can’t quite click into place.

    Some parts of Beqanna she remembers. She had found her favorite clearing, a corner of the Meadow that she had spent summer hours idling away during her youth. The hilly landscape flattened out in the distance to reveal the Field and some parts of her past come back to her, remembering trying to recruit and be recruited (but to where? By who?). The black mare stares out to that horizon with an expression that says she’d relive if it, if she could. She’d remember, if it would only come back.

    (That was the funny thing about dying. Everyone seemed to assume that it would be forever.)

    Suddenly frustrated, the dark mare snorted and left the only place she knew in this remade Beqanna. It seemed that whatever spectres haunted her mind were still guarded by the realm of Death and even though Celeste was alive, the Afterlife seemed reluctant to part with her secrets. Whatever bargain had been made, whatever deal had been struck to bring the Magician’s daughter back to life evaded her.

    So she wanders. And she walks. She goes until the River trickles ahead of her, bringing scents downstream from the kingdoms of this new Beqanna that she doesn’t yet know. Celeste is so busy in her remembering that she doesn’t take the time to notice where she is walking until-

    Until.

    She bumps into another horse. "S-sorry," she murmurs. (Such things didn't happen in the Other World. Ghosts passed through and by each other; never in to another.)

    The red and the black make her brow furrow again. She knows those colors, somehow. Those feathers. Celeste collides into them and it brings forth a spark of recognition through the grey mists of her mind, making her frown as she studies the other mare’s face. "Beqanna,” the black mare says. She can remember that much and overhearing other horses confirmed it. Tilting her head inquisitively to the right, she studies the other mare from that angle. Blinking she adds, "But here is the River.” Celeste blinks again, shifting her (living) weight to a more comfortable stance. "I think.”

    @[Seraph] *poofs confetti dust*

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    #3

    Miss Midwest Checkout Queen

    For most sentient beings in the world death was inevitable. From the moment one first set foot on this plane, the hours and minutes ticked down until the Grim Reaper came for you and eventually you were lost to the mists of time and memory, fleetingly glimpsed in a certain smile but never whole.

    For those who roamed the land of Beqanna death was more often than not fleeting, in one blink you were departing to the after-life, in the next you were springing up from the ground once again like a horse-shaped daisy. She didn't know that the veil between Here and thhe Afterlife had been rent asunder, up until a few minutes ago she had been cocooned and dreaming her years away, but as she rebounded from the solid flesh before her the winds seemed to shift and carried with it the scent of death and rebirth - however faint.

    "The fault is mine. It's been so long since I felt the sun on my face..." she trails off as she takes in the black mare before her. That stance, that slight furrowing of the brow that mirrors the one on Seraph's own face. Something prod insistently at her subconcious, a demand that she recognise this face before her but whether it was that Dark God Carnage wreaking his havoc or the Titans of Beqanna sharing some Otherworldly jest, the recognition did not come. 

    Realising she probably sounded a little weird (after all the sun graced all parts of Beqanna), she turned her attention outward once more, catching the word Beqanna as it passed through the air. "No, you must have heard wrong. This is not MY Beqanna." The words tripped over themselves as they rushed from her lips and she shook her head almost in punctuation to each sound.

    Only the thought that the mare in front of her might think her insane and take her companionship elsewhere made her settle herself somewhat. "Apologies. Being thrust back into the world of the living can be..unsettling. I'm Seraph." She thought about saying more, of prodding the stranger for more, but held her tongue for now.

    S E R A P H



    @[Celeste] No idea where this is going.
    Reply
    #4

    Celeste turns her face towards the sun.

    So, the Gates of the Afterlife had opened - had let these wayward souls lose on Beqanna - and the revelation that she isn't alone doesn't startle the black mare. Perhaps, the lost shade part of her soul, recognized the absence in the other. Maybe they had been lost together in the Ether? Perhaps, they had passed through each other.

    The dark mare doesn't let her thoughts dwell there long, though. Both she and Seraph know that Death is the inevitable ending; it came for them once and would come again. They have been there before and it does nothing for either of them to reflect on it. To know that they are alive again, that is a thought worthy of basking in the sun. To feel the warmth dawning on their skin was enough to keep Celeste in this moment. There was air in her lungs again - air that she knew was good, air that she has breathed before. A smile tugs at the edge of her dark lips, "And how does it feel?"

    She might know who she was before but she knows this feeling. This is living. And even if she can't remember dying, can't remember the before, she knows this feeling and this seems like a good enough place to start.

    What the other mare says makes her smile falter and finally, she frowns. "Your Beqanna?" the dark mare asks. Celeste studies the other mare - watches her face and takes in the depth of her coat again, feeling that familiar (irritating) feeling that she knows her. She has seen it somewhere before. Did they wander the same Beqanna? The one that was not this one? Do ghosts know each other outside the Afterlife?

    "Tell me about it," Celeste says, "maybe we can remember together... @[Seraph]." Even the name tastes familiar on her tongue and it makes the intensity of her stare brighter, flicking her gaze to the red of her coat before her brown eyes glance up again. "My name is Celeste." Ghosts had names, apparently.

    Maybe they could remember, too.

    does anybody know where anything is going? XD

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