scent night-blooming jasmine
voice lilting, soft, fairly high but not childlike or squeaky in the least. when singing, she is a soprano.

love in a mist, moon-dappled pale silver on a dusky lavender coat, the dapples showing strong in winter. lion's tail, classic, long and winding and wavy at the end. spindly legs, deer-like, but just equine enough to be convincing. pearly, graying lavender, cloven hooves that echo fairy tales with each soft step through the grasses, glowing in the moon-light; if one didn't know her height she would seem so far away from the ground, walking on stilts that never falter, never sway in the breeze as they ought to. a billowing, silver mane of waves that reaches just past her knees is like a love-stained cloud, so soft it feels like nothing at all. her skull dishes in near-extreme fashion, rendering her alien and breakable. her neck is swan-like but bare, just for your lips, or, not yours, sweetie, his. and those eyes - those snow-globes, so transparent you can see the flakes swirling when you shake her enough. let her lie still and they are picturesque winter mornings and never anything more or less. the irises are baby blue and cracked with gold (never shattered). the pinnacle of her form is the ivory, spiraling horn that reaches 14 inches from base to tip, off-white and prone to absorbing light and glowing faintly in the darkness. the oils on her skin smell faintly of night-blooming jasmine.

mercurial | passionate | loves often, lusts more | lives life by her whims | obsessed with superficial beauty | materialistic | flirtatious | easily hurt | appears distant but feels deeply | non-confrontational | avoids conflict | delicate ego | emotional

I want it if it's beautiful, I want it perfumed, I want it sparkling and glittering and at my beck and call. I want it for now and I want it to go when I leave and stay when I stay, to disappear when I tire. Clothes, jewels, people, things. My feelings are ephemeral. They command my wants; you are my wants and my unwanted and I pray you do as I say. I cannot command you; I can only ask and hope and when you deny me it hurts so so much but - sour grapes, you are not worth my feelings. Do not ask for me when I do not want you. I have known no hardship, no struggle, only love and lavender and when danger touches my flesh I flee, flee so far away and you cannot follow. There is more beauty elsewhere, stranger, lover, and I will find it without you.

Love in a mist, in a dream, temporary, fading on morning but so intense in the moment, that moment, forever lost to you both now but maybe once you smell a night-blooming thing and think "ah, yes, there she is," but she is not and you lament. She is quick to enter and quicker to leave, passionate and passionless in her attachments and detachments, respectively. You are beautiful for as long as she thinks you are. You are valuable forever, but that she would never admit.

Confrontation is not her strong suit. She relies on batted eyelashes and sing-song whispers and swaying hips, much-bigger boyfriends and distracting girlfriends to get you to look away; one moment is all it takes for her to dissipate on the summer breeze. "Do not test me," she says as you do, you test her every moment, the limits of her adoration, the limits of her love. You think maybe it is limitless; you could do anything, say anything and she would forgive you for that blemish because it's only under the surface, lovely. Maybe her love is limitless, but it is finite in its length, so, then, it must be limitless in its depth. She will not say. "What do you mean, "do you love me?" How could I love someone I hardly know?" Therein lies the dilemma: how well does she know you? How well do you know her? You could tell her every secret from dawn to dusk to dawn again and she will say, "but how could I love such a beautiful thing?" and you might think, "ah, yes, of course, how could you? You are only passion in the morning fog," but you might also think, "how could you not, when I have told you all the things to hate me and still you remain? What is it, if not love?" She could not answer you that.

It is easy to say that none of these things stick within her too-large, too-fast heart, but they all do, every single one so when you ask "how could you leave your family?" she will respond, "They are here with me now," and you might wonder if they feel the same.

They say deer are jealous of unicorns; the most delicate thing in the enchanted wood is not the white hart but the silver mare, dancing in spirals in the well-loved glade, flourishing as the night-blooming jasmine, never ceasing her breathless prance as you watch, as you join. (If you join. She loves for you to watch just as much.) You could have her until the golden sun rises again, if you stay long enough.

One thousand sparkling jewels could buy her, if only they were the right ones. She only takes if she intends to trade. She always has the upper hand in bargaining; she always has the choice to leave. You could have her and no riches or all the riches and no her. Which would you prefer to suffer? Mesnyi is never truly purchased, only loaned. And the interest is high.

Her sire was goat-like, deer-like, deformed but strangely beautiful, delicate, and small, like a little white flower. Her dam had weak lungs, and nearly died birthing her, but held strength in her quiet, and Mesnyi holds to this day that her mother is more beautiful than even she. Mesnyi was born without ailment; shockingly, but wonderfully, all jasmine-scented and dusky silver. Her parents loved her dearly and doted on her as if she was their singular joy. Perhaps it is true, but all others loved her parents. Mesnyi grew up in a secluded grove - a haven for malformed horses and their families. Mesnyi was not malformed. She was beloved, at first, for her perfection, but that love turned to envy and concern: she played harder than the others could (which was not so hard), breathing and moving and speaking more freely than anyone else. She was friendly with everyone, sweet and soft as lamb’s ear, but the children, ever perceptive, sensed their parents’ growing scorn and mimicked it. Mesnyi’s parents remained well-liked, her father especially, the kindest unicorn, but it was looking as if they could not stay. Mothers turned away from her, or obsessed over how “rough” she played, how “loud” she spoke, and in time she became the odd one out. It was a striking role reversal.

Just when her parents were readying to leave the safe haven they’d grown to love, a strange troupe of performers arrived, a ways off into the woods. Mesnyi, ever curious and now often alone, ventured out to find the odd, piping music - and came upon a circus. Or - not quite a circus, they said, but not just a troupe, and not just a family. Some were merchants, others beast-tamers and dancers, musicians and psychics and living statues. “We’re all family,” they told her, “mostly by blood.” They invited her to dance around their bonfires and learn their songs, to pet the “wild” beasts and paint pots and read cards. At first, her parents looked for her, but eventually they knew her to be with the travelers, and every night or sunrise, she came home safe. She was happier, they saw, and bloomed with the confidence and charm they’d watched shrivel in the year past. And then she asked to leave.

She wasn’t really asking, and her parents knew - there was a look in her eyes they’d never seen, and if they forced her to stay, they knew she’d go looking on her own. She would not tolerate her treatment in the grove now that she remembered what happiness felt like, and they knew that either way she would have to go. The performers hadn’t harmed her, and they hoped dearly that she would be safe in strangers’ care. With many, many tears - from sire and dam and even the others in the grove - they said goodbye.

Mesnyi found great joy in her new life. She missed her parents deeply, as well as her home, but here there were other healthy children that played much harder than her, and everything was new and everyone loved her. She learned a little bit of everything, moreso now that she was one of them, and could read cards and fortunes or fake it, could dance like a ribbon in the wind, stand statue-like for hours, play various instruments acceptably, sing like the echo of spring and paint somewhat well. She’d earned the affections of another boy in the group by the age of two, and they spent a good deal of time talking and looking at flowers and the stars.

Though it was not the kind of family Mesnyi was used to, the caravan was warm and fun and full of laughter. In the day they traveled, singing and talking, stopping in meadows and by lakes to dance and roll about (and bathe if there was water). In the night, they set up a fire and sang and danced and rolled about some more. Mesnyi learned to act, as well - taking part in performances as a waif or princess or some other fair maiden, starting small and with frequent rehearsals, never lessons - the learning was in the doing. She developed the air of a performer, but it was just as easy to hide, and she often chose to act as something else in the company of strangers or handsome boys. If they stayed in a town long enough, some of them would give her pretty things, but never would she go out into the night with them. She was told often to be wary of men, especially as both a performer and traveling girl, and she was always happier with Aleph, the first boy unfortunate enough to love her. When she was not learning, she was with him, watching river currents and whispering silly things, dancing to music he made on his favorite drum - her favorite drum - and singing duets as they sleepily watched the birth of dawn. It was, perhaps, the most fulfilling time of her life, but she would never admit it now.

It was the nature of these people - “the Benevolent,” as they called themselves, their title a letters off from Mesnyi’s sire, Benevolence, to exchange with other groups. If two of the Benevolent parties met on the road, it was customary to stop or travel together for as long as possible, increasing the nighttime joys tenfold. When the two parted, some members might tag along with the other group, and in general there was a fair swapping of Benevolent. They were all family, and unless there was someone new, like Mesnyi, or a birth, they all knew each other, at least a little.

This was mostly achieved by the great festival that took place every three years, in a forest grove not unlike the one in which Mesnyi grew up, though it was larger and now holds fonder memories. The festival was a gathering of the Benevolent, from all corners of the worlds; there were those that stepped through time itself to see their family again. For about a month, the different caravans would trickle in, meshing together as one clan, loving and drinking and dancing. It was here that Mesnyi and Aleph first culminated their passion, and it was here that Mesnyi disappeared into the crowd on the heels of prettier boys and girls. She gained a veritable harem; not interested in other fillies for love, she collected them, all the shining ones, and if they were not fantastically dressed she helped them to be. Boys and men alike pined after her, perhaps more than even Aleph, but none matched his aching heart. Mesnyi stood out among the Benevolent, which was hard to do, but not one thought of her as an outsider, and by this time she was as much a Benevolent as anyone else.

By the end of the festival, new groups were formed, and Mesnyi made certain to decide hers last minute so no boy would follow for her alone. It was a sin to leave the celebration before it ended, so everyone left at once on the turn of the new moon. In the midst of bittersweet and bustling departures, Mesnyi slipped into a caravan of less-familiar faces. Not-Aleph faces. She missed the caravan that had raised her, but such was the way of the Benevolent - to love, to leave, but hardly to mourn. If you were to mourn, you should not not leave, but Mesnyi found it easier to recall only the fondest memories, and to never wish for the people in them.

On occasion, Mesnyi left the Benevolent to follow beauty and other passions, the first a young nobleman with a taste for the exotic. By then she could hardly name her birthplace, and there was vast knowledge of the many worlds in her young, pretty mind. He gave her jewelry and asked her to show him parlor tricks, and at night she sung him to sleep. The only things he could not abide were her dancing and acting; he’d say often that he could not stand to see her pretend, and that her dancing was the stuff of “feral people.” She secretly found it insulting that he took her to plays and tried to teach her noble dances, at which she intentionally failed before him but perfected in private. After a few weeks she left him, disappearing into the dawn like the moon under the horizon, like Aleph’s whispers in the past. In time, she encountered a group of Benevolent, some familiar, and joined them.

The strange, world-stepping magic that all Benevolent seemed to know but could never do alone allowed them into Novus, a world that went unnamed to Mesnyi for many moons. The people of Novus were concentrated in their courts, and the Benevolent found little luck with stragglers outside capital walls. At night they performed, calling in crowds to watch feats of magic and muscle and mind. Some of the lands were familiar to Mesnyi - the shifting sands or towering mountains had incarnations in other worlds, but she found herself drawn to what was new, beautiful, and sometimes dangerous. The dangerous things didn’t last long with her; she’d weep for years if her hide was marred, and some of the boys would lock her up if she let them. She liked playing with lesser nobles and merchants’ sons - they had enough to buy her time, and even if they presumed to own her, they never tried to imprison her. They were almost as safe as Benevolent boys, but she wouldn’t see them again and they had more to give. The Benevolent were comfortable, but never rich, so all they could give was heart.

It was in the Dawn Court that Mesnyi found an urge to stay. The sprawling forests and blooming meadows were more home to her than any ocean crag or fiery dune, and it was both new and old, nostalgic and fresh. Her family worried after her more than last time; it was rare for the Benevolent to step so “far” as Novus, and it was unlikely that anyone would come back in the next few years, or longer. But there was beauty here, and comfort, and she’d make her own family if she had to (though one might doubt she could keep it together). It was a dangerous decision - she could not step worlds again on her own - but she hopes it was a good one.

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head jewelry -- Mesnyi sports intricate silver jewelry about her head and horns. There is a string of pearls around her forehead, which has a thin silver chain dangling from it, ending in a faceted pampel cut baby blue topaz right next to her eye, on both sides. A wide nose ring, sporting three tiny pearls on the top and a dangling sky blue faceted pampel topaz at the bottom is connected to her forehead pearls by a silver station chain.

horn jewelry -- the base of Mesnyi's horn looks as though it was dipped in silver. A silver chain with occasional blue topaz beads is twisted around her horn, and ends at the tip in a dangling yellow topaz pendeloque.

tail jewelry -- three chains hang about the middle of Mesnyi's tail, the two shorter chains sporting sky blue, faceted pampel topazes across. The longer, lower chain has yellow topazes cut the same.

mutations -- oils secreted by her skin smell of night-blooming jasmine
-- horn absorbs light and glows in darkness, fading as the energy is lost. "recharges" when exposed to light again.

enchanted violin -- A glass violin that is capable of playing itself at Mesnyi's command (verbal or nonverbal), but can also be played via telepathy. The bow and violin are of extremely hard, clear glass that reflects rainbows in the light. It is not easily shattered, but such tragedy is possible. The case of the violin is covered in a magical, ever-changing fabric that seems to always appear out-of-place, no matter the place or pattern on the case. It looks unusual for its surroundings nigh invariably. It may be solid, or patterned, or both, sometimes moving, sometimes still, but it always changes.

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