09-02-2020, 08:18 PM
l e p i s
gave me the blues and then purple pink skies
Having thrown all of her magic at him, Lepis is still catching her breath when the sand shimmers around the fallen Wolfbane. The dun mare’s pale eyes were already wide and wary as she monitored his reaction; she knows better than to think him weak enough to be felled by a single stroke.
She knows that golden glint to the air and the scent of an oasis that accompanied it. Wolfbane might smell it, she knows, since he was the one wished over, but the wind is against her even at these few paces that separate them. It’s been years since she’d seen the sand. The ancestors do not often meddle in the lives of their descendants, and Lepis has even more rarely wished for such meddling. Elio had said he was going to ask a magician for help binding the Curse, but Lepis had never imagined that he might find a genie instead. And in Nerine of all places, when surely it should be in a desert. It doesn’t matter, she knows, all that matters is that Elio had been successful and Wolfbane is trapped.
The wings that he shakes out are as white as the winter clouds overhead, when moments before she is sure they’d been dark. Perhaps it had just been the shadows but…there are fewer teeth now too, just a single pair of canines jutting out over sapphire lips.
The shifting abilities of the Curse have been stilled, and without it Wolfbane wears a shape that Lepis has not seen for nearly fifteen years. Wolfbane had traded those fangs for healing before Lepis had forsaken Sylva for him. The emotions this memory elicits are unexpected, breaking over her like waves. By the time she stills the waters, she is scowling. (She has found the single hammer-like blow had taken more from her than she’d expected, and her magical limbs feel watery and unstable.)
“I had help.” Lepis responds, pleased to find that her voice at least is still strong.
And she had. Elio and the ancestor were the most responsible for this particular bit of trickery, but there were others as well, their aid – however small – taken. She’d asked for more, of course, even knowing that fear and selfishness made them hesitant, but had never allowed herself to hope for anything more. An army would have been wonderful, but she doesn’t think she needs it.
Now that he’s nothing more than a pegasus with a pair of pointed incisors, surely Lepis can finish him off with just her own teeth and hooves.
It won’t be hard at all. He’s even lying down, wings sprawled from his crash-landing, almost seeming dazed.
Now is the time to strike.
Now is the time to move forward, to take the Curse and all the havoc it has wrought into her own hands, so she might set it aflame in the inevitable dragonfire.
And if he’d worn another shape, she would have been able to. Or so she tells herself, as she stares down at the face of the man she’d let sidetrack her destiny.
In some alternate universe, she is Empress over a thriving and pacified Beqanna, and all her children have gone grey like their father. In that place she rules the world through Arthas, exactly as her mother had taught her. The way to that world had been laid out in front of her: their rule of Sylva expanding to swallow Loess, then the Pampas when the Plague came, and eventually total command over each of Beqanna’s lands, an edict of peace ushering in prosperity never before seen in this world. Everything had been hers for the taking, if only she’d continued down the path she was on. It was so close she had tasted it each morning when she woke beside Arthas in the dappled red sunlight of the Sylvan forest. She’d needed only to hold fast and keep her course, to choose the life she was so sure she had wanted.
In this universe though, she had chosen Wolfbane. This exact Wolfbane, with the golden coat and stripes bluer than the sky, and a charming smile that had easily won the heart of his merry band of misfits. And Lepis' heart as well.
Any other shape. The thought repeats almost mechanically as she stares down at him. Any other shape.
@[Wolfbane]
She knows that golden glint to the air and the scent of an oasis that accompanied it. Wolfbane might smell it, she knows, since he was the one wished over, but the wind is against her even at these few paces that separate them. It’s been years since she’d seen the sand. The ancestors do not often meddle in the lives of their descendants, and Lepis has even more rarely wished for such meddling. Elio had said he was going to ask a magician for help binding the Curse, but Lepis had never imagined that he might find a genie instead. And in Nerine of all places, when surely it should be in a desert. It doesn’t matter, she knows, all that matters is that Elio had been successful and Wolfbane is trapped.
The wings that he shakes out are as white as the winter clouds overhead, when moments before she is sure they’d been dark. Perhaps it had just been the shadows but…there are fewer teeth now too, just a single pair of canines jutting out over sapphire lips.
The shifting abilities of the Curse have been stilled, and without it Wolfbane wears a shape that Lepis has not seen for nearly fifteen years. Wolfbane had traded those fangs for healing before Lepis had forsaken Sylva for him. The emotions this memory elicits are unexpected, breaking over her like waves. By the time she stills the waters, she is scowling. (She has found the single hammer-like blow had taken more from her than she’d expected, and her magical limbs feel watery and unstable.)
“I had help.” Lepis responds, pleased to find that her voice at least is still strong.
And she had. Elio and the ancestor were the most responsible for this particular bit of trickery, but there were others as well, their aid – however small – taken. She’d asked for more, of course, even knowing that fear and selfishness made them hesitant, but had never allowed herself to hope for anything more. An army would have been wonderful, but she doesn’t think she needs it.
Now that he’s nothing more than a pegasus with a pair of pointed incisors, surely Lepis can finish him off with just her own teeth and hooves.
It won’t be hard at all. He’s even lying down, wings sprawled from his crash-landing, almost seeming dazed.
Now is the time to strike.
Now is the time to move forward, to take the Curse and all the havoc it has wrought into her own hands, so she might set it aflame in the inevitable dragonfire.
And if he’d worn another shape, she would have been able to. Or so she tells herself, as she stares down at the face of the man she’d let sidetrack her destiny.
In some alternate universe, she is Empress over a thriving and pacified Beqanna, and all her children have gone grey like their father. In that place she rules the world through Arthas, exactly as her mother had taught her. The way to that world had been laid out in front of her: their rule of Sylva expanding to swallow Loess, then the Pampas when the Plague came, and eventually total command over each of Beqanna’s lands, an edict of peace ushering in prosperity never before seen in this world. Everything had been hers for the taking, if only she’d continued down the path she was on. It was so close she had tasted it each morning when she woke beside Arthas in the dappled red sunlight of the Sylvan forest. She’d needed only to hold fast and keep her course, to choose the life she was so sure she had wanted.
In this universe though, she had chosen Wolfbane. This exact Wolfbane, with the golden coat and stripes bluer than the sky, and a charming smile that had easily won the heart of his merry band of misfits. And Lepis' heart as well.
Any other shape. The thought repeats almost mechanically as she stares down at him. Any other shape.