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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]  for all of the light that I shut out, Svedka
    #1

    ── and i was never sure whether you were the lighthouse or the storm ──
    She has not been to Tephra in years – not since she went to live in Hyaline with Atrox – and she is surprised that the first memory that hits her is one of fire and ash. 

    Smoke from the earlier fires still hung in the air, and it reminds her of when Tephra itself had burned. Wars had been a regular part of Beqanna for as long as she can remember, but they had not been nearly so destructive initially. It is almost normal, now, for fire to ravage the lands, and she had been surprised at how fiercely she had hoped that Hyaline would be left untouched. She did not often grow attached to anything or anyone – least of all dirt and rocks and trees – but there was something about Hyaline that had earned its place inside her tattered heart. The something came in the form of yellow eyes set against a dark face, and she was slowly becoming more willing to admit that.

    She steps into the familiar warmth of Tephra, and beneath the faded smell of smoke, there is the fragrance of jungle flowers and the faint sulfur of the volcano. She does not need her eyes to know that it looms large against a bright blue sky and that at night it glows vibrant and orange. It was perhaps one of the more prominent landmarks in Beqanna, and it was one of the few things she misses.
     
    She had come here searching for Nightlock, her son, and Wonder, but instead, she finds herself closer to the volcano. It was usually quieter here, but there is a moment where she suddenly becomes aware that she is not alone. Her steps become halting and hesitant before at last, she stops. She does not need her infrared vision to find him; she had been blind before, for a hundred or so years, and she can feel the shape of him in the darkness. “I'm sorry,” she says in that soft, quiet way of hers. Her face angles towards him, the light of her halo almost softening the harshness of the gray stones embedded firmly into her porcelain skin where her nearly black eyes had once been. “I didn't realize anyone was back here.”
    ryatah

     
    @[Svedka]

    enjoy a post-buzz, super late night (early morning???) post! can I promise subsequent posts will be better? no, no I cannot.
    #2

    let my shadows prove the sunshine

    He had missed Beqanna burning.

    He had been in the warmth of his family’s grotto, cowering beneath dripping stalactites warmed by the volcano’s lava just on the other side. He had tried to convince himself that he had recovered since then, but the gnarled wounds in the shape of the lion’s claws (and the swell of his belly and the clicking in his brain) are constant reminders of his path into the afterlife and back again. He wonders if it would always be there; not physically, but deep within his chest like it sits now, heavy and daunting and begging to be acknowledged.

    Svedka refuses to, however, and instead hobbles from his hiding hole and into the familiar landscape of Tephra in search of something as a distraction; anything to numb him from the pain in his shoulder and the weight of knowing you were dead (and should be dead) and are currently not.

    Darkness greets him. All he can hear is the familiar and loving howl of the ocean’s wind against the mountainous volcano and the rugged waves pounding against the shore just a short distance away. It is soothing, almost like a lullaby as it graces his ears, and a gentle sigh releases from his lips. A glow catches the corner of his vision at first and for a moment he wonders if dawn has already begun to take its glimpse over the horizon. But when his blue eyes turn, he realizes he is mistaken.

    Basked in a golden glow that is so soft Svedka wonders if it is even a glow at all, she apologizes quietly for intruding. A shadow crosses over his pale gold and white face as his brow furrows slightly (his tribulation had not affected his inability to understand why anyone would apologize for their presence, it seems) for he would never consider it offensive to no longer be alone.

    “It’s okay,” he replies gently, shifting his weight away from her slightly to allow her to step closer. When she doesn’t immediately fill the space beside him, he takes a closer look at this angelic mare. It’s then that he notices the way her eyes do not reflect the light that she basks in; he then realizes that they aren’t eyes at all. He lowers his head slightly, his chin nearly touching his chest in an almost empathetic way. He doesn’t know why, but he feels that it had not been an act of kindness that granted her such a fate.

    “I was just enjoying the night air. You can stay here for awhile, with me, if you’d like. I’m Svedka.”

    svedka




    @[Ryatah]
    #3

    ── and i was never sure whether you were the lighthouse or the storm ──
    His voice is soft, like hers, and she thinks she can hear the light that comes from his mouth. She is used to harshness; gravel tones and words with sharp edges, things meant to break her and cut her and keep her compliant. Even the kindness that she has been granted often had ways of being deceiving. It’s why his gentleness catches her off guard in a way that it should not, and she wonders if he can see the confusion – though it leans closer towards suspicion – that passes over her face. She looks for the hidden weapon that might be wrapped in his words, and for once, she does not find any. Her head tilts in an inquisitive way, considering the stranger and his offer.

    She searches for daggers, and when she finds none she is almost at a loss.
    He feels like a light in the darkness, and she almost backs away.

    “Svedka,” she murmurs his name in her gold-spun tone, and she cannot see the way her glow chases away the shadows as she steps into the space alongside him. Her wings brush against his side, and she reaches to touch her nose to his neck – a habit that faded when she had eyes, but always seemed to come back the moment she was left blinded. There is a coy smile hidden on her lips when they find his skin, since she secretly delighted in having a reason to need to touch someone (or, to pretend she needed to). “My name is Ryatah.”

    She moves, and her lips find the healing wound on his shoulder. Something in her veins begins to hum, her lips growing warm; a need to heal, but she does not immediately offer. “You’re hurt,” she says, soft and concerned, her head tipped to fix the sightless stare on him. “What happened?”
    ryatah


    @[Svedka]
    #4

    let my shadows prove the sunshine

    Svedka has always been gentle.

    Gentle in a way that was unheard of in the chaotic world around them. Life had always been kind to him and he had never known a stranger; his heart is too large and because of it he could not bear to give it away to only one. Even after his venture through the afterlife and back again, he can already feel his heart pulsing and aching, begging for closeness and intimacy. He had never had to notice it before but he knows for certain that it is the only way he will truly heal.

    For a moment - brief and fleeting - he is thankful she cannot see the terrible wounds on his shoulders. Deep claw marks, vivid and jagged with his skin’s attempt to heal, red and swollen and ugly against the pale gold and white of his overo skin. Svedka’s cerulean eyes are gentle as she comes to stand beside him, feeling imperfect and small as he basks in the golden ambiance that radiates from her very being. Then, it seems like she hesitates and Svedka can feel his stomach clench and go cold with worry.

    I don’t want to be alone.

    A thought that had never been spoken aloud (and there is no exception tonight), but the uncertainty is a dark shadow across his otherwise pale face. His whole demeanor relaxes when she says his name. It almost sounds final in the way that it graces her lips; as if she had decided in that breath that she would allow him to continue to soak up her soft light. He cannot help the shuddering sigh of contentment that leaves him so breathlessly as she does not hesitate to fill up space beside him (it’s as if she knew that it was not the only company that he needed tonight, but something more). She is all light and ethereal, a figment of his imagination, he is sure.

    “Ryatah,” he repeats her name like she had his and his voice is careful with it. Gentle, as if it is precious like glass, nearly a whisper on his pale lips. He closes his eyes - those white lashes falling gently against the brightness of blue - as she tenderly touches his neck, finding comfort in the way that she somehow eases all the grief and confusion inside of him. His breathing, soft and delicate, comes to still as the warmth of her touch finds the burning ache of his wounds, still hot and infected across his tattered skin.

    You’re hurt.

    Svedka’s eyes open lazily, maybe about to protest her observation. I’m not, he would say with a charming grin and maybe even a proud toss of his head, but when his crystal blue eyes fixate on the golden halo above her ears and then gently fall to the dull gray of her eyes, he is unable to lie. There is a subtle shake of his head and a clear tension that falls across his body.

    “I died,” he tells her blatantly, his voice unwavering. His brow furrows, those lips of his pursing thoughtfully, confusedly. “He watched me die and then brought me back.”

    A pause, pregnant and nearly sinister.

    His voice comes through the air, broken and unsure as he stares into the blackness of the sea that is riddled with the soft reflection of silvered, twinkling stars. “Why would he bring me back?”

    svedka




    @[Ryatah]
    #5
    Her lips are still on his shoulder, and in a soft exhale, she seems to breathe her healing into him. It is not widespread, focused only on the wound where her touch lingers, easing the brightness of the pain. For all her kindness, her mind still did not work in the way many would expect. She does not heal him of her own accord, does not take it upon herself to complete such a selfless gesture in its entirety. He could ask, and of course, she would oblige, but at the moment, it does not occur to her to heal beyond what her lips are touching.

    It was just another strange way the wires of her mind had been crossed, another example of how the world twisted and molded her into this peculiar mix of dark and light and chaos.

    She settles against him then, shifting her delicate wings and resting her nose again on his shoulder with the relaxed confidence of someone that paid no mind to the idea of strangers and caution. She is brazen in a way that is muted by her angelic appearance and the ethereal radiance of her glow, a boldness that hides behind softness and light. Always the contradiction, with the halo above her head and the mapping of scars that etch a thousand stories across her body.

    A thousand stories, a thousand times that anything light about her was twisted into something else entirely.

    His injuries did not spark the same memory as touching Echis’s had, but there is still something in the way he speaks. The way he forms the words, so careful like he thinks someone – someone besides her – will hear them. She recognizes that caution, and thinks she can taste the remnants of confusion and fear that linger across his tongue. She knows it all too well, and even if she had not recognized it immediately, the unbidden quickening of her pulse would have told her all she needed to know.

    It all sounds so familiar, and she is surprised at the feeling that flares inside her chest.

    It is not quite jealousy because she is rarely a jealous creature, and what a strange thing to be jealous of regardless. To be jealous that someone else has felt his wrath and his mercy, and she wills that feeling of longing away.  She thinks the mark on her hip might sting but also thinks it could just be her imagination.

    “He does that sometimes,” and the way she speaks is perhaps not as heavy as it should have been. It is light, almost nonchalant, her nose still tracing paths along his skin, though her mind has now wandered thousands of miles – an entire galaxy – away. “How did it happen?” She asks him, quiet and careful, spoken in such a way it could be taken for concern (and partially, it is), and not the desperate curiosity that it truly was.
    R y A t A h
    and you can aim for my heart, go for blood
    but you would still miss me in your bones




    @[Svedka]
    #6

    let my shadows prove the sunshine

    The throb of his wound lessens and perhaps it is the shock of everything that still makes him bleary-eyed, but he at first assumes that merely her touch was enough to put him at ease. His own eyes close, his brow creasing slightly, as if pondering something (praying?). It does not even occur to him that tendrils of magic have wrapped their lovely hands around him, trickling into the fissures of his skin by way of her perfect lips. Magic can be terrible, he knows, and he wonders if he will always shy away from its power. Yet, in the same breath, he does not shy away from her.

    When she settles against him the quiet flutter of his eyes opening accompanies it. He likes to think he appears whole as she glows radiantly beside him and even though it wasn’t true, the thought of it makes a lazy smile twitch onto his pale mouth. They are two strangers only bound together by name and chance, but from their current positions, it would not seem so. Something deeper must draw them closer, any passerby would assume, and perhaps they would be right. Maybe it just so happens that they are both eager and willing to love every stranger; both of them bleeding hearts that find peace within touch and gentle gestures of intimacy.

    Svedka knows nothing of jealousy; the feeling is unknown to him and even if was described to him, he is certain he would not be able to grasp it. That is why he doesn’t hear any of that emotion in her voice, only the soft vocals of someone who knew.

    When he turns to her, craning his neck to glance first at her floating halo and then the silver-gray of the pockets where her eyes (beautiful once, he’s certain) should have been. There is no surprise in his expression, merely a glance of his cerulean eyes across her face as she speaks to him with all the gentleness of understanding. Her answer to his question does nothing to satisfy him and his handsome face pulls into a frown she cannot see (though he has a feeling she could feel it all the same). She is poignant in her answer - there will be no understanding of why.

    Though it troubles him, Svedka accepts it - for what else could he do?

    He turns to face the sea again, focusing instead on the meaningless patterns that she traces on his skin with the warmth of her muzzle. His mouth presses together in a line, his expression now thoughtful and patient. “He called and - ” Svedka’s voice cuts off for a moment, grasping for the right words, for it hadn’t really been him that answered, but it was his body that showed up. “I couldn’t stop the part of myself that wanted to answer to him.” His voice remains even and calm as he tells her of the lion, how Carnage had ripped it from him and let it kill him - how he had traveled into the afterlife, sent further and further in, only to come face to face with himself again. Part of him knew he had died a second death, but it didn’t make any sense so he tries to forget.

    When he mentions being drawn back across over the line of life and death, and how part of him (the lion) was left in the afterlife, there is something like regret in his voice. “I was so scared.” He says softly, barely above a whisper. He winces. “I still am.”

    Svedka doesn’t turn to her, but leans closer into her warmth. “Are you?”

    svedka




    @[Ryatah]
    #7
    She has died before, and she should be able to understand.

    She does remember being afraid; that part she can relate to. There is fear in the very moment, that instant when the pain is bright and all-consuming, and she wants it to all be over – either because it has stopped and she is alive, or because she is dead and does not have to feel it anymore. She has died many ways – with a skull cracked open by her first born, twice in the sea (once of her own doing, once in a sea crafted by him), and at the frigid top of the mountain when he slit her throat.

    But the fear stopped once she was alive again, and was replaced with an exhilaration that remained unmatched.
    That strange, electrical jump-start of her heart, that feeling of air rushing back into her lungs and blood surging warm and sure through once-dead veins – it was how she knew, again, that there was something inherently wrong with her.

    Because Svedka tells her his story, and while she understands the fear – she thinks it would be a lasting death wish to not be afraid – she does not understand the idea of it lingering.
    Because he has brought her back twice, he has burnt her with stars, and ripped her eyes from her face and watched her bleed onto the ground, and still she can do nothing but miss him once he is gone.
    Because he tells her this story of dying and the afterlife and being brought back and there is again that blooming feeling of emptiness in her chest, an ache spreading to her core when she wonders why he called someone else and not her.

    She listens though, quiet and attentive, and her touch is almost sympathetic as it slides further up his neck, because she thinks it’s how she should act. “I am afraid of him,” she confesses once he has finished, but there is a small, strange smile on her lips when she says, “but not really for the reasons I should be.” She is afraid of displeasing him, she is afraid of him growing tired of her, she is afraid of him never coming back. He had told her – promised her – that he would be back, and they both pretend that the reward is her eyes even if they know it's more complicated than that.

    All of this she keeps to herself, not expecting Svedka to understand even if she could find a way to ever put it into words. She was afraid that sharing the memories with anyone else would strip the intimacy from them, and though she might turn every moment over in her mind again and again until the sharp edges are worn smooth, they are hers and hers alone. “I can’t pretend to know or understand the reasons for why Carnage does the things that he does,” she finally says, resting against him once he leans into her. “But I’m glad he brought you back.” Her lily-white lips find the curve of his cheek, her touch still gently, almost exploratory, still remaining in the sweet, helpless part she has decided to play today. “You are a light in the darkness,” she breathes against him with a low, silvery laugh, “and I am an expert on darkness.”
    R y A t A h
    and you can aim for my heart, go for blood
    but you would still miss me in your bones


    #8

    let my shadows prove the sunshine

    Maybe the next time his soul is plucked from his chest, by fate or by a god, he will welcome it with ease; maybe what causes him to tremble now will be at rest, leaving him to be taken away without the darkness of fear in the shadows of his blue eyes. Maybe he could accept it with grace, with dignity (with the knowing that nothing he could do will change it anyway). Svedka does not know the way she had met death already in multiples and his heart will surely break at the idea of it.

    Even now, his heart aches and he cannot explain why. Fear, he decides, must be the reason his pulse races and shudders - for what else could it be? It is fear that lingers, that consumes him, that lounges so effortlessly in the pit of his stomach and the back of his throat. He calls it fear because what do you call something that you have no name for? With a breathy exhale, Svedka’s insides twist with something that is most certainly not fear, but the palomino stallion knows not what else to call it. It is something dark and terrible and out of place, that even her healing couldn’t touch.

    Her reassurance brings his fear to a halt momentarily. His cerulean eyes flick towards her in one white-lashed blink while a frown finds the pale pink of his mouth. Svedka doesn’t press her on the very reasons she finds herself afraid - though he probably would find that he understands those reasons far more than he’d care to admit. Perhaps part of it is too painful to say aloud (and he would hate to be the one to bring more grief to her beautiful face), but also because he is not sure he could bear to hear those reasons, in fear that those would be his reasons as well.

    “I think,” he muses softly, the tiniest curve of a smile on his lips, “I think I am glad he brought me back, too.” He’s unsure, of course, and that uncertainty resounds carefully in his otherwise gentle voice.

    Ryatah’s twinkling laugh makes him turn his head towards her, searching to see the smile that graces her expression. It brings joy to his own face to see it, for in the light of her golden radiance it is all the sweeter. “I hope that is something I can still be,” he admits to her with a gentle touch of his muzzle to hers, feeling the warmth of her smile despite its inability to reach her eyes. “Do you think it’s possible?”

    svedka




    @[Ryatah]
    #9
    Svedka, no matter how unlike himself he felt in this moment, was still the kindest thing she has found in recent memory. Lilliana too, and her own daughter, Echis, but other than that she was not accustomed to being in the company of something that felt so uncomplicated. She was used to having to be careful; to being mindful of the way her words might be twisted against her. But standing here with him, with the lull of the waves against the shore in the distance, such things were far from her mind. Even if the topic was on the heavier side, she found herself feeling oddly at ease.

    His voice, even when taut with an unnamable pain and fear, still sounded soft, like a golden light that still reached her even in the dark.
    It draws her in, leaves her wondering what he might be like when he was not haunted by demons (she doesn’t even remember what that would be like anymore – her demons have become so much a part of her that she would be nothing without them).

    “You should be glad,” she says with a knowing smile. “Being dead gets boring after awhile. The novelty wears off quickly.” There was always that moment that it was a relief; all the pain just gone, a sigh that would build in her lungs if only the air existed. The eerie calm after a frantically beating heart suddenly brought to standstill. And maybe, for just a second, the dimming of emotions was welcomed; until she inevitably realized she was to be left with a dull, lingering ache for all of eternity.

    Her time spent with death was not always brief. She knew all too well what it was like to be left to drift aimlessly in a never-ending dark, from a time before the afterlife had existed. Every time she has died since there was always that thought in the back of her mind that she might end up back there, rather than the afterlife – at least the afterlife had the illusion of being almost alive. At least the afterlife still clung to the barest of threads connecting it to this world, and she stood a chance of coming back.

    His touch feels warm, and while it is not the electrifying spark she is used to there is still something magnetic about it. There is a desire to be closer to him, and the thought – the hope – that this would not be their last time meeting. “I am completely sure,” she tells him with a certainty in her otherwise soft voice. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. It’s difficult to continuously find your new normal.” She is far from the original version of herself; decades away from the naive girl in the jungle, or even the young queen that lost her eyes in the Dale. She has learned to make peace with every rendition of herself, even though some were significantly harder than others.

    R y A t A h
    and you can aim for my heart, go for blood
    but you would still miss me in your bones




    @[Svedka]
    #10

    let my shadows prove the sunshine

    He can’t understand why she calls him a light. It’s a title that reminds him of years past, when he lived in Hyaline with his sister, and she named him the Heart of it. The idea is something that has always followed him it seems and though he doesn’t understand how he comes to possess the name, he wears it with pride. Just as he does now for Ryatah. Perhaps it is because she is a true stranger (and it had been so long since he had met a new face) that his mind is at ease as it is now. It had once been tumultuous and tangled - and though nothing much has changed, it feels as though she has ironed out all the broken parts, set them smooth with gentle and understanding hands.

    So much so that she even elicits a smile on the pearl pink of his mouth. “I’ll count my blessings, then. I do hate being bored.” He chuckles softly with a slight shake of his head - has it come to this, then? Joking about the one thing in his life that he can’t figure out? But even that thought doesn’t weigh him down too much, for he knows his younger self would perhaps give him that same advice.

    Svedka sighs. “I just want to be happy.” He does not let this confession fall from his lips like a tidal wave; it is gentle and sincere, not wishing for her to reply but only speaking it aloud to perhaps give him confidence that he will, in fact, find that peace sometime soon.

    There is silence that falls between them - still and wondrous and calm - as the gentle pull of the waves crash against sand. “You won’t be staying here, will you, Ryatah?” He smiles, glancing at her with those silent and sparkling cerulean eyes.

    svedka



    @[Ryatah]




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