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    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]  sometimes it's all I've got to spare
    #1

    Nestled among the roots of the large wisteria tree by Hyaline’s lake, Mazikeen sleeps. Although her wounds have been healed thanks to Ryatah, an ache in her head and the hollow place in her chest persists. She hasn’t brought this up with anyone, doesn’t want further energy wasted on her, but the presence of this ache makes her exhausted. She had tried to insist on going to Tephra as soon as she could stand but she had only made it a few steps before her energy and body gave out again.

    She does not understand why she aches so much, why there is a deep weariness that makes her compliant to Sabal’s suggestion that she rest near the lake. She should be able to bounce back, should be ready to fight again. Mazikeen had known that something like this would happen, had been warned, and she should not need this long to recover. What if Gale and the Curse return? What if someone else is in trouble and she’s napping?

    These thoughts make for restless sleep, and restless dreams, and when she drifts away she thinks she feels the slightest heartbeat in her chest.

    Or maybe it is the pounding of her hooves in the dream?

    In her dream, she’s not the mare she is now - eyeless and heartless and almost more scar tissue than flesh. She’s as bright-eyed and energetic as she had been before the eclipse, before this all began.

    But she’s being hunted. She keeps trying to twist, to see who it is. Each glimpse is something different, something new - she cannot see a form but she sees the colours. Iridescent blue, teal and white, white and gold, black leopard spots on gold. Mazikeen does not recognize this pattern as the same as what had flashed across her coat as she died, fragments of everyone she’s known.

    In her dream, she does not stand and fight as she would in life. Instead, she runs - and in the way of dreams, she is at once a mare, a filly, a fox, a deer as she does. Each step echoes so loud as they are timed with the beating of her new heart.



    @[iridian]
    #2

    iridian

    She is daydreaming when she feels that familiar tug on one of those strands that bind her to the dreamscape. It is not an uncommon occurrence, and she nearly ignores the sensation in favor of laying cradled on her back in the center of a giant wildflower where she can watch those strange storm clouds drifting up so impossibly high. But then it tugs again, and there is a note of intensity that she has come to associate with fear, a hurriedness that generally belongs to the adrenaline of a brewing nightmare.

    Iridian rolls over, and her navy eyes are wide and luminous as she concentrates on where that vibrating strand inside her chest leads to. For a moment she becomes the dream around Mazikeen, becomes the dark and the fear and the fury, becomes the flashes of color right up until they settle for just a moment on a shade that startles a gasp out of her and makes her whisper, “Firion?” And then she is the forest around the mare who is a filly and a fox and a deer, is a comet falling too fast across the dark of this nightmare.

    With a breath she severs the tendrils of the nightmare that tangle themselves around this mare. Like all dark it roils and rankles and tries to lash out, but Iridian is grown now and these things do not scare her as they used to. She touches the woman with warmth instead of skin, with compassion that has no body until suddenly they are both torn free of that place to land somewhere entirely else. Somewhere that is light and bright like a hazy summer day, with trees that whisper and dew that makes the grass around their legs damp and cool.

    It is home, the only home Iridian has ever known.

    “Hello.” She says, and her smile is something shy and bright and warm despite that delicate kind of uncertainty as she takes in this woman standing before her. “I hope you don’t mind, I didn’t think you were having a very nice time in that last dream so I brought you here instead.” She is so earnest in her honesty that it is almost laughable, all wide eyes and tentative smiles, the delicate rustle of chestnut and blue wings as they unfurl from her body like flower petals beneath the hazy sun. She does hope this woman doesn’t look up though, the tumult of gray clouds sitting higher than the sun is a disorienting kind of wrongness that might disturb her.

    “My name is Iridian.” She smiles again, takes a few steps to the side on cloven hooves so that this mare can see beyond her to the forest of giant drooping flowers and the showers of shining golden pollen that drift from them like glitter when the wind whispers by. “There isn’t a name for this place,” she is thinking of Tephra and Hyaline when she says this, “but it’s my home, and you’re welcome to stay until you wake.”


    @[Mazikeen]
    #3

    Mazikeen in her multiple forms is feeling the echo of a racing heart in her chest, though something is off about the feeling. Something isn’t right but in this place, running from this hunter, she can’t remember… She just thinks she’s going to choke on her new furious heart if it keeps this up. That is if she’s not caught first. Because Mazikeen knows without needing to think about it that if she’s caught, this heart will be torn from her and the world will go dark again.

    The panic causes her shape to flicker with each step and she doesn’t know which one is going to make her safe.

    Just when Mazikeen thinks she’s not fast enough, just when she knows who it is behind her, just when she thinks she’s going to get caught, the dream changes. Warmth brushes against her skin and Mazikeen’s pace quickens for a few paces before it slows. Before she recognizes what it is to feel safe and then her new heart slows too, easing into a steadier rhythm as the dark forest is traded for a summer day.

    She blinks a few times when she comes to a standstill, alarmed and relieved at the contrast between where she is now and where she had been a moment ago. This is not a place she recognizes, not even in her nicest dreams, and it takes her a moment to stop focusing on her surroundings and look at the mare who greets her.

    “Thank you.” She says even though she does not really understand how this is happening, eyes drifting to those large drooping flowers and how the air seems to sparkle. In this dream, she does not have all the scars she has in life or her twisted horns but she still feels… out of place here. “I’m Mazikeen. Or Maze, if you want.” Because it would feel odd to stand on too much ceremony with someone who had just taken her from a nightmare.

    She's not quite sure what to say next so she just says what pops into her head. “This is much nicer than where I was.” It is nicer than where she will wake too, but Mazikeen doesn’t want to speak of such things lest they drag her back into the nightmare, where she will eventually falter and not be fast enough to outrun what, who, had been chasing her.



    @[iridian]
    #4

    iridian


    Iridian understands the way this woman looks around, the way her lantern eyes are wide and searching, studying every part of a world that likely makes no sense. But there is nothing Iridian can say that she hasn’t already said, nothing that will further soothe this woman’s coiling unease. So she merely waits, watching with soft, quiet eyes until this woman comes to whatever conclusion she must. Iridian has no ability or desire to trap her here, and should she decide to wake, to fight, to pry herself from this place, Iri won’t stop her.

    But then she speaks a phrase of gratitude and there is an instant smile on the pale white and chestnut of her mouth. “You’re welcome.” She says, tracing the woman’s gaze back to where they now trace the shape of those giant drooping flowers. “It’s nice to meet you Mazikeen.” She picks the full version of the name, and she isn’t sure why except that it feels like some strange form of butchery to shorten something that feels so beautiful on her tongue. “I suppose you could call me Iri if you wanted.” It is a gentle kind of musing as her mind rejects the concept of Mazikeen’s nickname. “No one else does but I wouldn’t mind.” Maybe it is expected to carve names into something smaller, something that fits more easily on the tongue.

    Iridian beams at those next words though, something like the warmth of a shy sunrise reaching across those delicate pink lips. “Thank you.” Because it feels like a compliment more personal than Mazikeen had likely meant it, if only because this world had been crafted entirely by her. “I wasn’t sure what real life is like, so I used some of what my brother told me about and then made it,” a short pause, and she has the sense enough to flash Mazikeen a bashful smile, “well, bigger.”

    Her wings lift and stretch behind her, the blue and chestnut feathers like a chorus of whispers in the periphery of her hearing. “Do you want to take a closer look?” Because it seems like a politer thing to ask than 'what were you running from' or 'why were you so frightened'.



    @[Mazikeen]
    #5

    Like Selaphiel, this mare doesn’t use the nickname offered. Mazikeen doesn’t understand why some new acquaintances do and why some don’t, what it is about her that inspires the use of the longer version. Should she start going by ‘Keen’ instead? Of course she isn't thrilled about introducing herself as keen but if it'll help...

    Then again, her full name doesn’t sound harsh on the tongue of this dream-like mare, it almost sounds sweet, and she forgets within a few seconds to find it odd that her nickname isn’t used.

    Iridian follows Mazikeen’s offer of a nickname with one of her own and the orange-eyed mare can’t help but smile. She appreciates the attempt being made and replies with a friendly tone. “Well, I like the idea of being the first then, Iri.”

    Mazikeen finds herself wondering if she’s ever smiled the way Iri does, if there’s ever warmth in her looks that doesn’t have anything to do with fire. She doesn’t think so, especially not lately. And even though it makes her a little sad, she is glad too that she’s said something right enough to inspire such a warm expression - and it helps this pale mare forget how much she does not belong in this beautiful place.

    However, Iri’s comment about not knowing what real life is like causes a small frown to form and inspires her to refocus on the other mare and not on the drooping flowers.

    “Have you never been…” But she isn’t quite sure what word to use - real? Alive? So she lets the question hang there for a moment, before nodding at the offer to take a closer look - allowing for Iridian to ignore the half-finished question if she does not wish to talk about it. “Yes, I’d like that.”



    @iridian




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