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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


    kill your darlings - Aedan, any
    #1

    She comes without intent, drifting across Beqanna like a bit of spiderweb caught on the wind. There is little more to her than that, little more than skin stretched tight across bones, but Crackjaw never dies, she simply starves and strays and doesn't grow. The bones that carry her are as brittle as they are evident, and so it is lucky that when she clambered over the rocky foot of the volcano and stepped blindly into the sea that the tide was low, the sandbar just covered by an inch of sparkling blue water, or she might have simply washed away.

    The tide is coming in, now, though and the thin girl cannot cross again - she does not know how to swim - but her attention is elsewhere. Here, even more than the jungles of Tephra with their grid of magma that burns her feet, fragrant, delicate flowers perfume the warm air, and, when she investigates them, she finds the soft tropical fruits growing there without season.The trees here do not know winter, they bloom and bear fruit year-round. Crackjaw, though she has been, up until now, a rather empty vessel wandering the world yet retaining none of it like a cracked vase, knows that this is a Good Place, and she settles to remain at least until being driven away.

    The smell of mangos is bright and rich, and their skin is so soft that when she laps one up from the dirt like a dog and presses it against the jagged edges of her upper teeth, the flesh splits easily. Juice runs like a river from her jawless maw as she extracts what she can, until all that is remains is the pithy husk, too fibrous for her. She lets in fall with a soft noise back into the sand and moves on to the next, and the next, until her belly grumbles with the sound of too much sugar, and then she grows still, almost unnaturally still, and stares blankly out at the water, her alabaster ears twisting like antennae.

    It's almost as if she's paying attention.

    Crackjaw



    @[Aedan] have this weird creature.
    Reply
    #2
    He is growing us to the Island. It is a good place to call home, albeit perhaps a bit quieter than either he or Vita may have wanted. Still, it gives them the space they need to raise Bran, time to spend with him in a place that is safe and undisturbed. He doesn’t worry when he leaves them alone to mother and son time. Not that he doesn’t want to be with them always, but he knows it is still good for them to have their space.

    Besides, he’s taken to patrolling the border occasionally throughout the day. It was something to do, and though it was hardly necessary, it gives him something akin to purpose. It makes him feel like he’s doing his job, checking on things and protecting his family as best he can. Not that he does anything but say hi to the birds, but still.

    Today though is different though. There’s a hint of lava in the air, a smell he is familiar with, having grown up in Tephra. It gives him a twinge of nostalgia, though Tephra wasn’t truly his home. Somewhere along the way it had ceased to be the place for him. It’s not long before he finds the filly on their shores, standing impossibly still with white ears twisting back and forth.

    He nickers softly, eyes drifting to the way her skin stretches thin over her bones, eventually finding the missing half of her jaw. Oh. ”Are you okay?” he calls, realizing she may not actually be able to talk in return, but hoping there was a way to communicate.

    aedan

    the night is more alive and more
    richly colored than the day.



    @[Crackjaw]

    Use of mild power playing is allowed; no injuries without permission

    Reply
    #3
    lazy table


    She leaks all the time - mainly memories, tumbling in through her eyes and her ears and dropping out from the bottom of her skull like the discarded mango pits scattered in the sand nearby. If she cannot taste them, cannot catch them up in her tongue, she so rarely remembers. Is it a relic of her genes, imperfect and repetitive as they are - or the hoof-strike that nearly killed her in her first hours? It was, perhaps, the days, the weeks of lying still in the early spring snow, left for dead? It might be impossible to separate the effects of one from the other but together combined they leave her rather empty on the beach like the seashells littered across it, cracked skeletons and broken homes vacant of their tenants.

    The young mare does not seem to hear him, though his hooves crunch in the white beach sand so deliciously. It's a lie, sand has no flavor of it's own, but it has a horrifying texture, one particular inclined to wedge in every crack and crevice between your teeth and stick unpleasantly to your tongue, so though she hears his footsteps, they drift away from her like ghosts. She refuses to remember them. His soft call washes over her like a gentle wave, and because she knows so few gentle things, like a fisherman, it reels her rambling attention off the hypnotizing sea, all the way back to the shore where two horses stand, a lovely stallion and a strange skinny girl--

    Ah, no, that's just her again.

    Sometimes, she forgets, thinks she's someone else, yet it rarely turns out that way. 

    Actually, never, that she can remember.

    Yellow eyes seem to focus slowly when they turn to trace the star-speckled stallion and she eats up the space between them. He wears those stars so beautifully, not like the connect-the-dots that curl across her own body, a thin mockery of his night-sky skin.

    Are you okay?

    If her father had given her more of himself, perhaps she might have a better talent for mimicry. Alas, the pink, fleshy tongue curling against the ridged roof of her mouth is entirely equine - clumsy, at best, tripping over syllables made by creatures wearing a second jaw.

    "Nah," she has never been okay, she has only been not dying, but her thoughts don't stop at his polite concern. The fisherman reels her in beyond their conversation and she wonders what the night sky tastes of, what are the flavors of the stars, "Nah. Taste?" It sounds like a question but she doesn't wait for permission, or for him to puzzle out her meaning, instead she stretches forward to run her tongue over the slick stars that dust his ribs.

    Salt, she will remember, Stars taste of salt.

    Crackjaw
    tastes like water spiked with strange


    @[Aedan]
    Reply
    #4
    He has never really thought much about his childhood, but how often does anyone do so when it is a good one? His parents loved him and they gave him space to be. Certainly no one ever left him for dead, and though he was never much of a momma’s boy, he loved his mother and his father as they loved him. Perhaps it is best he does not know her history, or he may keep her here. May shower her in love that she doesn’t even want, but with their own child now, he seems incapable of not playing the doting father sometimes. Less doting to his son, but to a daughter? Ah...let’s not imagine how sappy he might get.

    It seems to take her some time to turn and realize he is there. He waits though, worry etching his expression just slightly. Her response is….well, it is unexpected. Rarely does anyone answer quite so honestly, and he wants to ask more but how to phrase a question that she could answer? But before he can even formulate a thought, she is asking taste? and he doesn’t understand at all. Not that she needs his answer, because soon enough she is licking him.

    Ah, well, that was....it was strange, for starters. But also, after a few moments of getting over the feel of someone’s tongue on his ribs, it helps him make sense of her. A girl who cannot talk or really, probably, eat. A girl made of skin and bones who looked like she was just trying not to die. A girl who navigated the world by taste. ”What do I taste like?” he asks with an amused grin. He’s not sure how well she can answer, but might as well find out.

    aedan

    the night is more alive and more
    richly colored than the day.



    @[Crackjaw]

    Use of mild power playing is allowed; no injuries without permission

    Reply
    #5

    She presses the taste of the stars to the roof of her mouth and finds herself surprised - she did not expect this. Yet, the scattered stars that rest across his shoulders like a magician's cape do rather look like salt rime gathering on rocks at low tide and so she nods and decides it is right. Stars are another kind of salt. Like sweat. Like the sea.

    What do I taste like?

    "Lahk teahs."

    The words form slowly, carefully. She is not fully without language. Bits and pieces come to her, sometimes enough to be understood, though she avoids long sentences. It becomes too difficult to remember the words she can say and the ones she will only mangle. It becomes too difficult to remember what they are discussing, too difficult to keep her thoughts from skipping the tracks. His tracks in the sand have filled with glittering seawater and catch her gaze, leading her away like sugar drops, and she has followed them several paces past him before stopping as if she has hit a wall.

    No.

    Whose tracks are these?

    They're not hers, she doesn't remember that her footprints ever led her anywhere - they have always been followers, too shy of the world to ever go ahead. It is exhausting, sometimes, to always have to lead, a burden she feels most heavily on longer journies when the weight of them drags down her feet and makes their impression long and lazy. No, certainly not hers. She places her own foot into the deep well of one and finds it larger than her own. Seawater bubbles up around the shell of her hoof, the damp sand bows and cracks, falling in around, and Crackjaw is lost in a universe of tiny details. She turns to see how her inattentive tread has broken the trail and finds the night sky watching from behind.

    Stars. Salt. Tears.

    "Helluh," her head tilts on its knife-thin neck, "Ah knuh yuh?"

    Yes. She can taste him still on the roof of her mouth.

    "Yuh nest heah?"

    Crackjaw
    tastes like water spiked with strange


    @[Aedan]
    Reply
    #6
    Like tears. Well, that’s not quite what he expected, but then again, what did he expect? It makes sense, perhaps, if tears are salty things. It is warm here, and there’s always a bit of sweat on his skin, so the salt is not unsurprising. But he is not particularly familiar with tears, and so he cannot compare. Perhaps he ought to consider himself lucky.

    She wanders off, as if she has already forgotten that he is here. He does not follow, though his eyes do, concerned but not overbearing. She is some space away before she turns back to see him watching her, and for a moment, it is clear she does not remember him at all. It takes a moment before recognition flickers back to her, but he is patient, if nothing else.

    ”I do,” he says, still kind. He wants to call to the stars, wants to bring them down to comfort her, but the sun is still high in the sky and though he can make darkness, it is never quite the same when you rip apart the day to do so. The comfort of the evening is lost in such destruction. ”My family and I nest in the north of the island. Would you like to see?” It was not in fact a nest, but it was a clearly inhabited area of the island. Two adults and two children could take up some space, it seems.

    aedan

    the night is more alive and more
    richly colored than the day.



    @[Crackjaw]

    Use of mild power playing is allowed; no injuries without permission

    Reply
    #7

    The broken girl stands still and quiet for long enough that it almost seems as if she has forgotten him again, even though the glossy yellow of her gaze appears to rest on his nightsky coat. Only her ears seem to move, and they flick as if they are stuttering, in a repeating but unintentional pattern. It is a reflection of her thoughts, forming oddly in colors and shapes, with soft, undefined edges. Somewhere in her past, grass waves at eye level and there is a sense of peace and of goodness. She cannot place this memory, it might have been yesterday and it might have been years ago, and she does not remember, but this is what his mention of a mate and children and home stirs in her breast.

    It is not her home. She has never had one, she has never had a family, at least, not any whose faces find their way to her through the dark and baffling fog of her mind, but there is some understanding of this concept, this idea of belonging, and even she, destined to forget so much, knows enough to clasp the feeling firmly, greedily. One slender foreleg extend towards the stallion with a more halting, trepidatious, energy than when she approached him before because she is trying so very hard to hold onto the moment, like a marionette, stilted, uncoordinated, Crackjaw draws up beside him and presses her nose against his shoulder, the sharp edges of her over-grown teeth hidden, her tongue tucked neatly to the roof of her mouth like a monster tamed.

    “Yeh!” Yes, she would like to see where his family spends their days, warmed by the tropical sun and the blacksand beaches. His skin is warm like the sand underfoot, but smoother, and her grip on the present wavers dangerously, ready to lose itself on the slick summer hairs and slide down them into some other reality. Tension settles across her brow. What is she agreeing to? It almost doesn't matter, she remembers feeling happy a moment ago and tilts her head away from him, tries to smile (and fails, of course.)

    "Clackyaw," she draws her nose to her chest as if to gesture at herself, "Ah called Clackyaw," it's a name she can't even say, let alone remember how she came by it, or how the memory of it is burnt so clearly into her mind. She certainly does not realize that if the pronunciation of it is a struggle for her, understanding it must be nearly impossible for others. She has had so little opportunity to give her name to anybody, but she has practiced its shape on her tongue a thousand times just the same.

    "Yuh? This land called anything? I like it heah."

    Image by footybandit



    @[Aedan] edited for HTML sorry lol
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