"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
If you knew her, you might wonder what she was doing here.
Surely this capricious user of magic, this woman who has seemed heartless, surely she is no mare of the light. Surely she should be chased out, cast down, leaving Pevensie to rule alone.
But there is more to it than that. Camrynn is not made purely of malice; she is a finely crafted creature, subtle and multifaceted but always in control. She is an odd mix of certainty and unending learning, of knowing and being entirely curious. She likes to push the envelope, to know what's possible, to seek out things that should not be doable, to do things that perhaps should not be done, simply because she wants to know what will happen.
Imagine that you could poke a hornet's nest and know with certainty that you could protect yourself from getting stung. You'd do it, of course you would.
Camrynn stands upon a dune, the sun tickling her back as she looks out across the kingdom. She enjoyed the place even before she dropped her illusions, in the days when she lived with Pevensie as a daughter and tried to see the world with a child's eyes. She's sworn an oath to Yael that she will rule in her true form, and she intends to keep that oath – although she's taken a small liberty of thinning her coat a bit, the better to enjoy the heat and relentless sun of her home.
Her black coat shines and shimmers in the sunlight, impossibly beautiful. That is one gift of magic: she always appears poised, never harried, never dirty, never anything less than her best. Her coat shines with the best of health, her mane and tail are free of tangles, floating gently in the hot desert air. Her eyes are a deep cerulean blue, the color of water on seashores far from this land. Across her chest a gold crook and flail shine, a legacy of the competition that brought her and Pevensie to the throne. Across her left cheek a line of gemstones glitters gently, the equine version of a necklace. She is regal, lovely, beautiful, everything a queen should be.
Their reign is impossibly young yet. No doubt there would be those who would naysay the two of them, especially her, a virtual unknown in the kingdom. But there would be time to win them over. They had ideas, they had plans, and thanks in part to her, they had knowledge that other kingdoms might not want them to have. It is a good position to be in, and she hopes it can help the Deserts thrive.
She hears shuffling, and looks up to see Gumby shuffling along a dune in the distance. He seems to have some kind of stick in his mouth, and is looking for some place to bury it. She smiles at her creation; he had been her brainchild, and it's her magic that keeps him alive (although whether anyone else from the Deserts could deduce that so precisely, she isn't sure). Part of her hopes he can remain like this forever, that he need never show just how strong and vicious a protector he can be if it ever comes to war.
But in her heart, she knows that war is coming. She knows the tensions that are brewing. And a much larger part of her welcomes the storm, welcomes the chaos, and can't wait to see where things fall when it's all said and done.
Everyone is made of light and dark; some seem to glow with the amount of light within, while others walk in shadows. They are two sides of the same coin, and to say that the light-hearted were not capable of darkness would be a fallacy. To say that the dark could not love (for isn’t love the source of light?), could not have mercy or loyalty or friendship would be an untruth as well. Yael herself has twice ruled with dragons, and they were beloved by their subjects. Good subjects.
Perhaps it is the angelic who are the anomaly? The Yaels and the Pevensies of the world, who try to see the good in the world and make it a better place, while others are resigned to the reality. Perhaps they need their counterparts (each side), lest either get carried away and throw the universe off kilter.
Yael may be the youngest magician, but her magic is as old as Evrae. Morphine told Yael her story while they were traveling the world, how she was the daughter of the first Valley King and his lover, how she discovered her powers, her loves, and her losses. Take away the millenia age difference and Morphine and Yael were very much the same, and that is why the old magician gave her powers to the golden queen, entrusting her with a job she no longer had the desire for - a world she no longer wanted to live in. But something happened in the transition, and some of the magic was lost or used up, so Yael’s power is less than what Morphine’s was, and she is still discovering what she can do. She is not flashy, like Evrae, or so capricious as to use it to make herself more alluring, or return to being a filly, or anything like that. Hell, half the time she goes to the Field, she ends up scaring the poor recruit away!
But there is nothing wrong with that, she thinks. It doesn’t hurt anyone, does it? Isn’t that the greatest qualifier?
From the moment Yael saw a grief-blurred double in Camrynn’s small bay body, she had been intrigued, and had had every intention of finding out exactly what was going on in her kingdom. Now it is no longer her kingdom, but she still has every intention to find out what is going on. The little golden mare appears quietly beside Camrynn, giant gilded wings tucked against her sides, displacing as little sand as possible. She looks first to the black mare, and then to the sphinx creature, and smiles. The wind brings a welcome relief, but it is also full of questions and tensions and perhaps even the distant drums of conflict.
At least she wouldn’t be the one to lead them down the path that again. The guilt of that killed Morphine, and almost brought a pacifist Yael to her knees.
“Penny for your t’oughts, dear?” She will always call her dear. Some old habits never die.
04-18-2015, 05:05 PM (This post was last modified: 04-18-2015, 05:15 PM by Camrynn.)
so you wanna play with magic?
She feels the way the air seems to tighten and pinch together, thrumming with magic, and she knows that a magician is coming. She doubts it will be Eight – he would not come here (probably), not when there are so many other places they might go – and suspects it will be Yael. When the golden woman appears, Camrynn turns her head to regard the younger woman with the older magic, a small smile playing on her lips.
She is silent at first, letting the other woman speak. But rather than immediately answering the gold-mare's question, she starts with a simple greeting. "Yael." she greets with a hint of warmth in her velvet voice, smiling gently. She holds no unkind feelings toward the mare; much as she would have rather continued her deception (mostly because she wasn't in the mood to drop it yet) she understands the reasons why Yael and/or the gods of the Deserts would have required it. They need leaders, not children. She can respect that. And besides, it does no one any good for her to hold on to those kinds of feelings even if she were to be so inclined.
She turns to look out across the Desert at Gumby lets silence hang between them for a moment. A penny for her thoughts – she doubts that would cover it. Her thoughts are as expansive as Yael's own, stretching out over time and space even more impossibly infinite than the sands of the Deserts. She has made it part of her mission to study the roots of magic, to seek out those who use it in any form and learn when, how, and why they came to wield it, but still its ways are more mysterious than she would like. She plays with it, she uses it, it's an additional limb, and yet she knows so little.
There is so much that could be spoken between them, the old queen and the new. They could talk of war (Camrynn hears it too, the distant drums), they could talk of alliances, of the tensions and questions and everything else that swirls across the land like stormclouds. But they both know so much – what kind of a conversation is it when so little is unknown? And so she settles on something entirely different.
When her answer comes, it both is and is not an answer. "How did you first come to the Deserts?" she could have looked into the past for the answer, could even have looked into the mind of Yael, or of any other horse who happened to be here at the time to understand the truth of it. But she's rather respectful when it comes to magicians; she tends to let them especially speak for themselves, and she will never probe their mind unless invited to do so.
So she simply lets her gaze rest on the golden woman, watching her with a delicate half-smile, and waiting to hear her story. In time, no doubt, Camrynn will ask her about her magic, delicately unraveling the mysteries of the golden queen, drinking in the knowledge of her history like lemonade on a hot summer's day. But she – they – have all the time in the world, time to discuss their lives, time to discuss the Deserts, time for anything and everything. It is one of the greatest gifts and most terrible burdens of magic.
CAMRYNN
co-queen of the deserts, magical, mother of badassery
Camrynn may think whatever she likes of Yael’s reasons for demanding transparency, the once-Queen thought it a small price to pay for a healthy, well-cared for, and powerful kingdom. The Desert was her child as much as the four-legged ones that she pushed from her womb, and for Yael to hand it over without some sort of built-in precaution would be akin to abandonment. Asinine. Reckless. And yet just as the black mare holds no ill will towards the golden one, the opposite is true. Instead of the day to day minutiae, perhaps Yael can think about the longer-term well being of the Kingdom. She is the Guardian, after all. She has a direct link with the Desert.
Eventually they will have to talk of alliances and perhaps, even war. Lucrezia has disappeared, and Yael is not willing to let the diplomatic duties fall on the wayside. She will don the cloak again, if only for a little while. Once the will of the kingdom is known; once the discussions have been had and they have talked about it to death.
Today is not that day.
She chuckles, a throaty tinkle of notes that is completely genuine. “I doubt zat ees vhat you vere t’eenking… but eet ees not an uncommon kestyon. Eef I may show you eenstead…?” Now this particular trick she saw Morphine use more than once, allowing Yael (and other monarchs) into both her personal memories and an eagle-eye view of the massacre in the Valley, on two separate occasions. She briefly wonders if anyone has done this to Camrynn before. It can be… more than immersive. Some may become overwhelmed with the emotions of what they see, even by the emotions of the original experience. She’s never tried this with another magic user before, so perhaps Camrynn will feel nothing. She is strong, and Yael would never force such feelings (terror despair confusionpain ohgoditburnsherskin!) on anyone.
The golden mare turns her head to look directly at Camrynn, gentle brown eyes beckoning her to open her mind as Yael does. Slowly, the world around them fades away and they see Yael as a dark bay filly, chattering away in a foreign tongue and running with others both younger and older across a rocky desert that is not so different from their current one. The view changes to her personal memories now, the various children now given names - Tali, and Levi and Aaron - her sister and brothers - as they settle in for the night with their Ima and her tribe. The next thing they know, the air is filled with smoke and alarmed cries of azor lee! accompanied by screeches of pain. A nose jolts her hard and her Abba is pushing her and the smallest, Levi, in front of him, trying to guide them out of their communal area that seems to have been overtaken by some sort of wildfire - how and why it happened, Yael still does not know.
The exit is blocked by flames and burning bodies, but there are thin steppes carved into the sides of the walls. They are too tall for little Levi to reach, and too delicate to bear an adult’s weight, but yearlings have always climbed them in feats of bravery to impress girls and guys alike. Her Abba tells her to jump, to be the ibex, to not worry about them; her lungs are scorched and her fur singed by flying embers, the screams are deafening, and the flames grow ever closer. So Yael jumps and climbs and escapes, a blind sort of fear propelling her up and across and away from the deadly firetrap and she does not dare to look back. Blackened by soot, covered in singed fur, coughing and dehydrated, Yael runs and stumbles until she can go no further and eventually collapses into an exhausted, nightmarish sleep. The pattern continues for several days until she reaches lands that are familiar to them now, but at that time merely marked the end of Yael’s strength. She finds water - and a black mare finds her - using the universal body language to conquer the language barrier. This is why Yael believes love is the most powerful force.
The rest is history. Yael comes to the Desert with Fictional and begins to learn the B’kannan language. She runs with Galat, her first friend. She sees the King overthrown by two mares and pledges her loyalty. She earns those dearly beloved gilt wings with diplomacy. Two years later, she becomes Queen when Krys steps down.
And that is where the saga ends.
Present-day Yael closes her eyes and severs the link between them, shaking her head a bit to clear the residual emotions from her body. There are parts that come after that which she is unwilling to show anyone; they are her moments of weakness, her darkest times and her greatest treasures. Those are hers, and hers alone. Hers… and Van’s.
“Ees t’at vhat you vere looking for?” she says almost ironically. If nothing else, she earned her throne. She earned the love of the people. “And you? Vhat xas your journey been like?”
Tit for tat. This for that. Come now, Yael doesn’t judge. And she is mighty curious.
"It was one of many things. Who ever thinks of just one thing? The mind can do so much more." her words are gentle, spoken with a hint of a smile. "And it would be an honor if you would show me." she speaks, and she means it. She is no stranger to sharing memories this way, and when Yael suggests it, she is in fact eager. It's a terribly practical thing, really, a great way to communicate things far more vibrantly than ever possible through words. Being a magician (and using the technique herself), she's rather practiced at managing the emotional rush that always ensues.
But even she is not unaffected by the trials of the small filly. She respects the woman even more deeply as she watches Yael grow from an awkward child, struggling with a language barrier, into a confident queen. Camrynn had never doubted that Yael had earned the throne. No one in the Deserts (except, perhaps, her) had ever failed to earn it, and earn it thoroughly. Even Pevensie had. But where Pevensie's main claim to the throne was the fact that she had earned it, Camrynn's was the fact that it suited her like a strange glove. She was a born ruler, oddly enough. Not like Yael was – Yael was born to be a queen of the Deserts, born to be forever its guardian, born to give it everything. Camrynn is born to pull the strings, born to be the one at the top, the ringmaster of the circus.
Yael speaks, and it takes Camrynn a moment to think of what she could possibly say. And so she settles for the one thing she can think of. "I'm sorry about your family. I'm glad you forged a new one for yourself here in Beqanna." she offers with a smile, touching the other mare delicately with her muzzle.
And then Yael asks about her. The half-smile twists her features again and she snorts gently. "There is less to tell than you'd think."
The world around them melts away, and they stand, the two of them, on the edges of the Valley. There is a mare, nondescript, who gives birth to a pure-black child and leaves before she can even properly stand. The girl is unfazed – her only reaction as she watches her mother walk away is for her eyes to shift, turning a deep stormcloud grey. This is Camrynn as she was when first born, before there was magic. Shrugging it off, she teaches herself how to stand, and marches out of the Valley with a determined ease.
The world turns again, and she comes back into the Valley. She is older now, but still not old. She walks with a confidence, a knowledge, a bearing more similar to what she is now. It is easy to see the glimmers of her personality at this stage, as she pledges herself to the Forsaken Valley, working for it under Vampyric and Expelliarmus, becoming one of the Divine, the Inner Circle, in the kingdom that her grandmother had always loved. There are moments, times when she plays with her illusions, hints of how she'd use her magic when it came.
And then, there is the Catastrophe.
She runs, confused, through a Beqanna gone mad. The earth shakes, the sky pours, everything is wrong – and suddenly, she is swallowed up by the ground, tossed and turned within it like a strange terrestrial womb. She is the key element in some strange refining process, a diamond being taken from very rough to entirely smooth. And when she emerges, she is magic. It has worked its way into her bones, entwining itself with everything she is, the very essence of who she is. It takes her almost no time at all to get used to it, for it to become an extra limb, an extension of herself.
They see is Camrynn leaving Beqanna, taking her grandmother Librette and walking out of the world. The years turn, and suddenly Librette is back in the Valley, and Camrynn awakes beside an oasis, cloaks herself in the body of a filly, and returns to Beqanna. Yael sees it all with fresh eyes, the way that Camrynn rips space-time in two to accommodate her desire to go with both Pevensie and Scorch, the way that she pretends to be something innocent and perfect, something she has never been. The way she swears to the jungle, and the way she arrives at the competition and knows that she could never rule a kingdom in the name of another.
It ends when filly-Cammie joins the circle of horses around Isis' cup, just before she takes a sip of the purple liquid.
And then they return to the Deserts, to their kingdom, to each other. Camrynn too has many things she's not ready to share with the Deserts queen – Yael is not the only one who keeps secrets. No one needs to know of her interactions with Eight and Evrae, her various 'favors' and how she calls in those marks. Everyone has their secrets.
"Like I said, nothing much." she shrugs. She does not believe her story is remarkable, at least not to one like Yael who understands what it is to use magic.
She lets the silence hang for a moment, before she asks a question about which she is deeply curious. Not because she thinks Yael knows the actual answer (although she might, it's not impossible) but because she wants to hear what Yael thinks on the matter.
"Why do you think they chose me?" she asks, looking out across the vast expanse of sand, her voice quieter, thinner, more reserved than it usually is. After a moment, she looks back to Yael, her eyes a shining Deserts-gold. She can think of many answers, many things that might (or might not) qualify her. But above all, she wants to know Yael's thoughts.
CAMRYNN
co-queen of the deserts, magical, mother of badassery
There are some days she wishes to return to the way things were before she had magic. She is too much like Morphine and not enough like Evrae to reach the pinnacle of their potential. She is a good witch through and through and if she didn’t have wings, she might float down in a pale pink bubble, and no one would think it strange. This is the land of the yellow-brick road, isn’t it? A road that has expanded to encompass all the light touches, leading down the path to the Oz of their minds. Only there was no Dorothy yet; only the strange and odd creatures that could be at one point flying monkeys, and at another, the Tinman.
Isn’t that the way of magicians?
The Oz of their minds is a constant parade of color and whirling swirling topsy turvy curly possibilities. And for some, she is sure the figments of potential possibilities break out into song and dance. That seemed like something Evrae or Camrynn might enjoy.
She opens her mind again and is sucked into Camrynn’s past, nothing well that neither of them were born with the gift, and both of them endured some sort of natural tragedy. How odd, she thinks. How similar, and yet dissimilar. They were not quite the two-faced Janus, they could not be complete opposites; they were more the aspects of a multi-faced Goddess, even more than the Maiden, Mother, and Crone. They were the Stranger and the Trickster. They were almost unable to be categorized.
When the memories break, Yael nods her thanks for Cam’s sharing says simply, “Everyone’s story is important.” She hardly thought her own was, though it explained much about her, even if the only thing they ever wondered was where she originally came from. Soon her reign would vanish into the annals of history and Van’s tree would simply be the magical oak in the Desert, erected as a memorial to a King no one remembers. Who now remembered the War? Who could say they knew of Roark, the leftover King from some silly little Blood Alliance? They do not realize that everyone’s stories are built upon the stepping stones of others.
Camrynn asks her Why and Yael hmmms in the back of her throat. They (including Yael) always want to know why, don’t they?
She has her ideas, though she was not privy to their individual competitions. She knows what she asked from the Gods, and she knows they gave her two answers. So she can surmise and draw conclusions, but in the end neither of them may never know. “Vell…” she begins slowly, “Vhen Nocturnal and I ruled, ve deed not vant ze ruler to be based on bloodlines, t’ough zat ees vhere I first looked for an air. No vone vas… suffeecient. No vone stood out as a natural choice. I t’ink zey chose you because, as you said, t’ey xad somet’ing to ensure your loyalty and because you are eenovative and young and xaf a sort of energy t’at ze past four rulers never xad. I t’ink zey saw ze goodness een Pevensie and ze ambeetion een you, and t’at ze two of you togezer vould be a good match.” She adds hastily, “t’at ees not to say zat you are not good! Just… vell, you know vhat I mean. You two ahr ze ekal scales. Pevensie ees like me, and you are more like Vankish.”
Yael shrugs and smiles and knows it is not meant to be mean in any way. It is simply the truth of the matter. Pevensie wanted to make the world a better place. Camrynn wanted to play with it. The Desert had been ruled by murders and liars before, so goodness wasn’t necessarily a qualification. But there was a balance that had to be maintained. Perhaps Pevensie had been chosen first, and then Cam second.
The Beqanna of the magicians is Oz, no doubt about it. What kind of world is it where they can dive into each other's minds with such ease, getting lost in memories they don't recall, drowning in emotions they've never felt? Surely that is the strangest of strange lands, the most intimate and distant experience all at once. And who can go there, to this land of Oz, but the magicians? They all shape it as they like.
And no doubt, in Camrynn's Oz they dance and they sing, and the pink bubbles float and green witches fly and houses fall daily.
They leave her Oz (complete with its own transformative natural disaster, as it happens) and Yael speaks of the importance of stories. Camrynn agrees; that is why she seeks knowledge and wisdom, seeking always to know. What is knowledge (indeed, what is memory?) if not just a collective of everyone's experience? The world is so much less interesting when it isn't colored through anyone's experience. It is better, yes, to laugh, and cry with the memories you pluck from the wind rather than to just view the dispassionate record of events-as-they-happened.
She listens to Yael's version of her coronation with interest. She agrees at almost every point. The Deserts did need an assurance of her loyalty; she is not insulted that Yael says it, because it is both true and necessary. She is not ashamed of her prior fickleness; she aims to be one step ahead, especially of those who do not wield magic, and she understood what Scorch was planning and what her role could truly be. Betrayal is not something she cares much about at all. Her magic, on the other hand, she cares about so deeply, so profoundly, that she would never jeopardize it.
That's what she gets for needing to know if she can rule. Her magic in jeopardy.
Except that it's not, because she's an excellent queen with no intention of betraying her kingdom. She smiles when Yael speaks of Pevensie; the little mare is one of a tiny handful of horses who will never find themselves tricked by Camrynn unless there is absolutely no choice in the matter. It is astonishing to think that the mare had gotten under her skin, but it is possible, especially if you are as pure and good as Pevensie has always been. Perhaps Yael will be that way for Camrynn someday too.
When Yael hastens to say that she is not not good, Camrynn can't help but chuckle. "I think we both know I am not good, Yael." She says it with a smile, as though it is a joke, something to be laughed at rather than something to be lamented. "But perhaps it's not possible for one who is good to rule here alone." she says, thinking of how Yael herself had started seeking a replacement the moment Vanquish had left her to rule alone. "Pevensie and I balance each other out very well indeed." she sighs, her eyes shifting to the horizon and turning a bright shade of silver as they do so. "And we'll need it, I think."
She turns back to Yael, her eyes still a disconcerting molten silver. "What do you think, Yael? What do you see in the future?" They could perhaps try to pluck it out, but it seems to change almost moment by moment nowadays. The grand future is so nebulous, so undetermined, comprised as it is from so many different elements. Every choice that every horse in the entirety of Beqanna tends to shake it one way or the other, and so discerning it is like panning for gold, or seeking a needle in a haystack. Whenever you get close, it shifts, changes, and hides again.
Camrynn's thoughts on the matter are not secret; she sees trouble brewing, and not just from the new blood alliance. She knows that they are safe from the Valley, and that probably means they are safe from the Chamber – but what if the Amazons marches on one or both of those kingdoms? Or if those kingdoms march on the Amazons? There is war brewing, she wouldn't doubt it.
But what does the actual light aligned horse in this conversation say?
CAMRYNN
co-queen of the deserts, magical, mother of badassery
No, Yael is adamant about one thing, and that is even the worst of them - the dark gods, the mass murders, the rapists - even they have some good of them. Carnage has Gail. Elite had Cagney. Kinglsay has (will never have, not while she breathes) Etro. In love there is light. In that light, one may be spared while the rest of the world is covered in flames. The staying of violence, even for a moment, is some small victory.
Mischief is not Evil, nor is Chaos. She often things that mind control might be evil, but even that can be used for good. Could not Death bring about Life? Sure, there were some things that were undeniably ill and beget terrible atrocities and personal pain. There were some things which had no redemption, and once upon a time Yael might have striven to eradicate them all. Once she might have hoped to be a great beacon of light, to shine so brightly that the darkness would flee and all would be well in the world.
That dream has changed; not in its goal, but in its scope. She is now concerned only with her family and her Kingdom. The world may fall apart outside her borders and she would do her best to help - but she would die for the Desert. She would die for Mikhael and Nairne and Natilyn, for Etro, Akbar, Kitra, Gaza, Zilpah and Munroe. If it came to that end, she would do it in a heartbeat.
“Vell… I don’t t’ink anyvone can rule effectively alone. To be truly safe and keep an eye on everyt’ing? Eet ees easier to divide ze tasks. It vas easier for us, so t’at ve might xaf time for each other.” Yael shrugs, knowing that not every Queen loves her King, that it is often a partnership and not a romance. Their system worked until the end, until Yael didn’t want to make it work anymore. One could shoulder the burden, especially if they had some super power to be everywhere at once, or if they just didn’t care about somethings, or could delegate properly (that was a hard skill to learn sometimes). The kingdom was growing, and she wondered if they would be able to work together, or if one would end up with the brunt of the work.
However, she would not presume to tell Camrynn how to rule her kingdom.
The lines of her lips harden with the next question. What was the future going to bring? They were caught in a web, with one action causing ten possible deviations that hung in the balance until that choice was made. Everything spiralled ‘round and ‘round and curled every which way, never leaving a clear path until it was all said and done. Was it some sort of test? How could Yael know how to answer this one, and better yet, how could Cam, either? “Ve vont be any closer to knowing until ve go and see ze ozer kingdoms. But I, for vone… vould like to see us respected, for vonce. And not just because ve now xaf two mageecians. But because ve ahr strong and xaf loyal members. I dont vant anyvone to dare to t’ink of attacking us.”
Some might say that the best offense is a good defense, but the opposite was also true. Make them afraid to strike so you don’t have to defend.
Yael knows she’s deviating from her standard pacifist (not that she’s said a word about raiding or anything resembling something similar, but her goal has always been to keep them safe. Perhaps there was another way than sitting quietly, and maybe, just maybe that was was better.
If there is ever – ever – a queen of the Deserts to advocate for something beyond being a pacifist, it's going to be Camrynn. Because for all of the things she does that are about as non-light as it gets, beyond everything else, she has one clear, legitimate priority: the Deserts. It may be a fairly recently adopted home, and she may have spent more time living there as its ruler than anything else, but she has sworn to protect it. The trick is, because she's no pacifist, her brand of protection (and her brand of "strong kingdom") is a pretty striking reversal from what a typical light queen might offer.
Although, in a world where conversations like the one they'd had with Scorch can happen, in a world where Camrynn can end up the ersatz voice of reason in a group that includes Yael and Pevensie – well, really, who knows.
She listens carefully as the once-queen answers her question. It hadn't been a test, no – it was just her curiosity, the desire to gather as much information as she possibly can. And Yael's information and input are very good. It does surprise her to hear the mare speak of respect, to start to understand what she might be talking about. She isn’t entirely clear on what it might mean; she knows what she thinks of when she considers being respected so much that they would not be attacked. In fact, she's even got an idea of what she'd like to see.
She nods. "I agree. I think we deserve respect, and like you said, not just because of you and me. Because of all of us" she emphasizes, staring out across the Deserts. "At is sits right now, we're fairly safe here. It would take a massive army to overcome you and me. Gumby alone can handle two or three horses in a fight." she sighs. "But the military is weak. The respect you speak of isn't going to come from there. Not yet, at least. Not without it becoming stronger."
She pauses again, looking out across the dunes. "I'll be interested to see what the kingdom visits reveal. There's so many changes in rulers these days, and as the rulers change, the character of the kingdom changes too." she says pensively, thinking of Eight in the Valley. She wonders if Yael has ever met him, but decides not to sift back through collective memory to see if she can answer her own question. She'll know soon enough. "Speaking of, you and I should get to the Valley." the black woman says briskly with a gentle smile. "It seems like a nice day for a flight." she says, sprouting resplendent wings with feathers of red, black, and gold as she speaks. She knows the gold woman has a soft spot for wings, and why not? It's a beautiful summer day.
With a smile, she takes off for the Valley.
CAMRYNN
co-queen of the deserts, magical, mother of badassery
