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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]  burn me to the ground, phae pony
    #1
    hadrien
    This is the story his mother hands him:
    there is a sister somewhere out in the world and he should find her.
     
    But the mother does not know how the sister has changed, how the darkness changed her, how the fire has consumed her.
     
    So the boy looks for a sister that does not exist anymore. Because the sister no longer has antlers but a halo of fire. She is no longer the same seal brown as the mother, the same seal red as the father, she is touched by flames. He could look her in the face and not know her at all. And the mother cannot explain why she left her and the boy would not be able to tell the sister how he came into existence should she ask.
     
    But he will never find her.
    So he wanders for no reason other than to wander. 
    Because this is where the mother led the daughter through the brambles and the darkness.
     
    The truth is that the mother does not know if the daughter survived any more than the daughter knows if the mother survived.
     
    And it is up to the boy to find out.
    (Is this the purpose of his life? To find the sister and bring her home?)
     
    He pulled the light from a firefly once and held it in his mouth, swallowed it down and swore he could feel it glowing in his chest.
    But now it’s only darkness in the forest and he’s lost track of the mother but he knows he’ll find her again.
     
    He skips over fallen logs and under low hanging branches.
    Deeper and deeper he goes and colder and colder it gets. Until he can see his breath and he thinks maybe he has gone too far.
     
    Maybe this is where the sister ran off to.
    (He does not know of the darkness that fell over Beqanna some years ago. He does not know of the darkness that changed them. The only darkness he knows is the darkness that closes in around him. Crushing blackness.)
     
    He stops. 
    Hello?
     
    He must be alone.
    but if that chariot they’re driving don’t swing low enough for us
    Just paint two crosses on my eyelids and point me out of touch



    @phaetra
    Reply
    #2
    Frey once might have had a story that begins with Momma always told her; but the Fates, the Gods, and the endless magic of Beqanna had a destiny for her Momma that not even her Momma could understand.

    So she might start with Momma always told me but when she says Momma she stutters over the word and peers up at the elk shining with sympathy. "Momma always told me she loved me," she'd say, on a whisper, and the denmothers would ruffle her fuzzy mane and laugh sadly (laugh in a way that Frey wouldn't come to understand until some years later). Momma did tell her she loved her--she told her she loved her several times and spoke the name Frey like a prayer--

    then disappeared two days after Frey's birthday.

    Frey has yet to experience an always. The only surety in her life is the soft meadow grass and the quiet elk. Even then, they have no desire to keep her here. To Frey's simple child mind, that does not mean always. Her always should be a mother keeping Frey fiercely tucked to her side.

    There is no always and that is why she often wanders from the Adoption Den.

    So when she hears the soft hello, Frey strides toward it confidently, searching for her always:

    "Hello."

    And though this does not immediately feel as if certainty stands before her, Frey feels herself clinging to the boy's white face with the ferocity of one who knows abandonment intimately.

    "I'm Frey. Is your mom around?"


    @hadrien nakey post >:(
    Reply
    #3
    hadrien
    He does not expect an answer.
    And yet.

    And yet, he gets one anyway.

    And out of the darkness comes a child. (Relative, of course, but she is a child just as he is a child and children have no business being alone in this kind of blackness.)

    He blinks at her. Surprised, perhaps. Or maybe something else. Disturbed? But she is confident, as if she belongs here just as he belongs here, as if there is nothing at all strange about the way they have met here.

    So he does not ask her what she is doing out here, if only to save himself from having to explain what he is doing out here.

    (How do you explain that you are looking for a sister that you have never met for reasons you do not understand?)

    He’d said hello, not to her but to the air pressing in around him, and she’d said hello and he wonders if he should say it again and be more specific about it this time. But she’s telling him her name and asking after his mother instead.

    He turns his plain gaze into the darkness that surrounds them, his brow dark with confusion.

    No,” he answers reflexively and then begins to wonder if she knows his mother.

    Is this the sister? No, the sister is older. Much older.

    Do you need her?” he asks, though it feels like a silly thing to ask. Would he be able to find her again if the answer is yes? He doesn’t remember now where he left her. Besides, will she be there when he gets back? And what could this girl need his mother for? He exhales a slow breath, trying in vain to sort through his own confusion.

    but if that chariot they’re driving don’t swing low enough for us
    Just paint two crosses on my eyelids and point me out of touch


    @frey
    Reply
    #4
    Big Grin 
    Frey feels a simple ache, the beginnings of a crack in her heart. At her age, her foundation is so soft and unfinished, she feels every creaking wind and violent onslaught of rain. She bends with the force of her storms, suffers for every whim. Soon, that crack will expand just as her heart will expand, imbedding itself into her very essence—irrevocable unless Frey’s heart is entirely remade.

    That cold rain washes over her as she stares at Hadrien, as she feels the full blackness of her blind eye. If he says his mother is nearby, she’ll feel her lack of normalcy like the tearing of a tornado over a well-rooted tree: pained and groaning, but not uprooted. And if she isn’t . . . There’s no speculation to be made, as Hadrien simply answers no. The filly sucks in a breath and looses a soft, child-like sigh.

    “No,” she answers just as simply, tilting her head to better see Hadrien.

    “Where did she go?”

    What she doesn’t say is the flood of words desperate to spill from the dam of her teeth. How she doesn’t know where her mom is, but she knows she loves her. How she’s sure even if Hadrien doesn’t know who his mom is, Frey knows she must love him regardless. How she wishes so badly he had said yes, even if knowing someone with a mother made the freezing rain seep further into that twisted, cracked foundation.

    Instead, Frey stares, head held with the kind of cold pride a child should never wear.


    @hadrien
    Reply
    #5
    hadrien
    This is the only thing he knows to be true:
    his mother is not a thing meant to be kept.
     
    He knows it just as his sister had known it before him. When they’d parted ways, he had not asked her where he might find her again. He had left her with every intention of keeping his promise to find only the sister and tell her that their mother had survived the darkness. 
     
    And he would tell her, too, that their mother was sorry that she’d had to go, though their mother had said no such thing.
     
    There is an uncertainty blooming in the center of his chest, splintering outward as he studies the viper stood before him, considering her strange questions. Is she friend or foe? Is she asking after his mother because she intends to sink her terrible teeth into his throat? He shifts his weight. He wants to peer into the darkness that closes in around them, stare off into the sheets of rain that fall, even here beneath the canopy of this great forest. 
     
    But he does not look away from her because he does not want her to make him her prey. 
     
    I don’t know where she went,” he admits, toying with his own fate. He is alone, there is no one looking for him. She could split open his belly and bleed him dry and no one would ever know. 
     
    Is she a dark thing or is it simply his youthful paranoia?
     
    Where is your mother?” he asks because it feels like an appropriate thing to ask. 


    but if that chariot they’re driving don’t swing low enough for us
    Just paint two crosses on my eyelids and point me out of touch


    @frey
    Reply
    #6
    The soft pattering of rain draws Frey’s lime gaze up to the dark canopy above. She breathes out, watching the air fog up and away from her face. She is thinking, thinking so deeply, about the world that always seems to wash away around her; and it feels as if there is some epic truth in those thoughts, some pillar of personality to bear the weight of how she lives for the rest of her days.

    How losing her mother might shape her forever, clip the tapestry weaving carefully within her, a piece of a beautiful pattern to be left unfinished until her last breath.

    Frey strings Hadrien’s chestnut and white into her story, knitting the splash of his face like a ghost (like she might never see him again after this, like he might only linger as some bodily instinct to ask questions). The filly stands ethereally still, focusing on that DNA she suddenly wishes she could change.

    “I don’t know where mine went, either.”

    There’s a tightness that lingers in Frey’s chest at the admittance, her first true sensation of regret. A single tear blinks out of her unseeing eye as she feels her body trembling with cold and the desperate need to take her words back.

    She didn’t want her abandonment to be real, didn’t want her own words to be the ones that finally brought it into reality. Even the den mothers in all their maternal-care didn’t dare mention Galadriel, as if they possess some supernatural sense of exactly what each lost child needs, even if it is what they need is more tribulation.

    Frey sucks in a breath broken by chattering teeth.

    “It’s cold in the rain, this deep in the Forest,” she admits as if her words were not already jumbled by the chilling rain and the damp air.

    “Where are you going?” Frey asks.
    Reply
    #7
    hadrien
    He understands without having to ask that her mother being gone and his mother being gone are not the same. He understands it in the tightness of her voice, the tear that slips from her eye and streaks down her cheek. He can see it even in the rain.

    But he is just a child and he does not know how to offer her comfort. He does not hand her a lie about how she’ll come back eventually. Or how she’ll find her when she least expects to. He only stands there and watches her cry and feels a vicious stabbing in the center of his own chest. Because things are not as simple as he’d once thought they were.

    Her mother had left her under different circumstances than his mother had left him. He should have been able to tell simply based on the way she’d fixated on the idea of his mother, but there are so many things he still doesn’t know.

    He extends his nose in her direction but does not touch her. But this close, he can see the way she trembles. (Is it from the cold or from something much worse?) He swallows thickly and thinks that maybe he’ll take a step toward her, offer her some warmth even if he can’t offer her anything else.

    But she speaks again and stays him where he is. He offers her a lopsided kind of grin that lists and fades as he nods and glances over his shoulder. 

    I’m looking for my sister,” he tells her but does not tell her that it’s something his mother asked him to do. He shifts his focus back to her face, acutely aware of her trembling now, “we could walk together for awhile, if you’d like.” 

    but if that chariot they’re driving don’t swing low enough for us
    Just paint two crosses on my eyelids and point me out of touch



    @frey
    Reply
    #8
    It is a relief to be invited to do something, though Frey won’t recognize that relaxing of her muscles for what it is until years later. Hadrien may not know how to comfort a child—being just a child himself—but the little snake can sense his intentions within some instinctual part of her.

    When the boy grins, Frey can’t help but to return it, even if it is a weaker version of his boyish one.

    “I’d like that,” she answers quietly, voice warbling beneath the sound of the pattering rain. The brilliant lime of her eyes glimmers with the gentlest of hopes, the kind of wonder that only a soft, inexperienced heart can feel. While a darkness threatens and looms within her, Hadrian’s simple, generous offer leads her away from the precipice hanging high above the sea of shadows.

    Frey gestures for the colt to lead her in a direction. She settles into an easy rhythm beside him, quietly attempting to swallow the panic that chokes her when she wonders if he’ll ask her to leave when this walk is deemed over.

    “Can I—” Frey stops mid sentence. She swallows, then finds her strength and finishes, “Can I stay and help you find her?” A grim smile lifts her mouth as she adds, “I know I don’t see much with one working eye, but . . .” She doesn’t have a punchline, so silence follows.
    Reply
    #9
    hadrien
    He is a young thing, too. Inexperienced in what it means to try and lift anyone’s spirits. But she smiles at him and it’s weak but it’s not nothing. That means something, he thinks, it has to. 

    And it’s a pretty smile, even if there is still sadness lurking in the furthest corners of her mouth. Even if it’s not particularly convincing. It’s a smile that makes him want to reach out and touch her, if only to see if he can inject more life into it. But he doesn’t. He is young, but he knows that others are not meant to be touched unless they invite it and she has given no indication that this would have the effect he’d want it to.

    So they fall into step instead, venturing quietly through the underbrush for a time. Just the two of them breathing in time and he almost forgets what he was meant to do. For a moment, it simply feels like a walk through the forest with a friend. 

    But she calls his attention back to his responsibility, his need to find his sister and tell her that their mother is alive, and he glances at her. He is prepared to answer simply: yes, of course, two sets of eyes are better than one. But his heart sinks with her admission. He hadn’t even noticed, he realizes, though it should have been obvious.

    He swallows thickly and summons up another smile. “Of course,” he says. Plain. As if she hadn’t even added the second part. 

    But he’d heard it and he can’t ignore it. So, after a moment of quiet, he asks, “is it hard?” It is perhaps impolite but he is too young to know that. He watches her as they walk and clarifies, “only being able to see out of one eye.” 

    but if that chariot they’re driving don’t swing low enough for us
    Just paint two crosses on my eyelids and point me out of touch



    @frey
    Reply




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