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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


    love me like the blackbird loves the night
    #11
    Gale
    this is going to break me clean in two --
    this is going to bring me close to you



    Despite the depravities for which his body is responsible, Gale still flinches at the idea of murder. He had known to expect no less, and remembers far worse, but expectation is not the same as preparation. He’d killed an angel? Gale swallows, feeling as though there is a mountain range traveling down his throat as he does, and the words that he thinks he wants to say cannot find a way around. Perhaps this is a good thing, for he has never been the most adept at wordsmithing, and finding the proper words to convey the enormity of his regret is as difficult as keeping his lightning in check.

    Yet the violence that Casimira speaks of is strangely absent in her tone, and she forgives him before he can even apologize.

    Her eyes were closed, but when she opens them he is watching her intently, his expression caught somewhere between concern and bewilderment. How can she forgive him so readily, and be so sure of her mother’s revival and forgiveness? An angel, she’d said.

    Not everyone will be forgiving, Casimira tells him, and he feels the familiar churning, and must push away the memories. Some things he had done are unforgivable, he knows. And even if the white mare in front of him has absolved him of the death of her mother, there are some atrocities beyond pardon.

    “I don’t deserve forgiveness.” He says solemnly to her hesitant smile. He is not smiling back, but he does try for something better than the chaos that spins internally, managing to keep all but the lightning that darts along his skin. “I mean to do what I can to make amends, but…” Gale’s voice trails off with his thoughts, having arrived at the same inevitable conclusion that he always has. He could use the lightning.

    His reluctance to use magic has kept him here on this island, has kept his shape equine and his eyes unaided. To use magic is to remember what he’s done, and he is not ready for that yet. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be ready.

    “I don’t even know where to start.”

    @Casimira

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    #12

    CASIMIRA

    dragon-shifting daughter of ashhal and ryatah

    “Everyone deserves forgiveness,” she gently corrects him. Perhaps some would call her foolish and naive, but she simply could not bring herself to carry around the anger that had come with hating Gale. After all, it did not change anything. Her mother still bore the scar on her chest from where he had ripped her heart out, and the pain of when she was gone could not be erased.

    It seemed, to her at least, a waste of energy. 

    “Perhaps it would be different if you had not been cursed, if you had done everything with an entirely sound mind. But I choose to believe you when you say that you did not know what you were doing.” She goes quiet for a moment, as if she is unsure about revealing what she says next. “I used to never remember the things I did in my dragon form. But there were enough signs to tell me I did terrible things.” The countless mornings that she awoke to the lingering taste of blood on her tongue, and the memory of the star-dappled mare speeding towards her during the Tephra-Loess war when she had the haloed-stallion pinned beneath her. “No one has ever directly forgiven me because I don’t know who to ask for it from, but I have tried to learn to forgive myself.”

    Something that she has failed at almost daily, but she does not tell him this.
    She does not tell him that even if everyone she had hurt forgave her she does not know if she could ever afford herself the same grace.

    When he says that he does not know where to start, she has only one answer for him: “Hyaline.” It was the kingdom that had taken the brunt of his curse—Mazikeen and her mother, and all the residents that had grown wary living beneath his rule.

    Finally, she takes a step back, shifting her gaze in the direction of her kingdom. “I should get back to Tephra,” her blue eyes find his again, offering him a small, tight smile. “You’re still welcome there, if you ever decide you don’t want to be alone. Just no nightmares this time, we get enough of those from Rare,” she says with her weak attempt at humor, although she does not expect him to know or remember who her daughter is.

    “Take care, Gale,” she leaves him with another faint smile, and with a spread of her dragon wings she takes flight, disappearing over the sea.



    @Gale
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