it's our world they can never have it Her tail swept through the water, the briefest of motions as she looks towards the silver queen, as she considers everything that she has learned of Fable and Seraphina, of the desert that surrounds her and the tyrant on the throne. These were dark days, and there could be no light at the end so long as Raum stood on the throne, and yet -- and yet, here there were dragons, here there were the remnants of her people and their cousin-species. “I know little of the dovah myself,” She murmurs, and there is no mistaking the sadness there, the tinge of regret that she should not have grown up amongst the people of her mother like her sister had been able to; it had not been safe for Valyrian to bring her oldest daughter home, not when she would be forced to reclaim her territory and her rank, not when Jaylin would become a target for those who wished to keep her from doing so. The thought of her old home is bittersweet, as gorgeous as the roses and as sharp as their thorns -- oh, how she missed her old home sometimes, despite the strange way of the heretic herd, despite the way she had never quite fit within their ranks even as their queen. “It was absolutely gorgeous, especially in the spring when the peaks would still be covered in snow and the valley would be overrun by roses. You would smell them long before you came through the mountain pass.” It had been, perhaps, the easiest to defend strategically as well, with only a mountain pass for those born without wings to access the valley where the herd itself had resided. And yet, her downfall had come from within, from a herd member she had thought she could trust, even if they were not friends. For a moment, the fins along her neck flare as though a warning, a gleam in her eye akin to fire sparking into life when she is asked about her curse, about the way she has come to be here. “My second mate and I had a daughter. She was beautiful… and she was born sickly, enough that we were not sure if she would survive the night despite my best efforts to heal her. My mate… she panicked, and while I slept that night, she took our daughter to a sea witch. I do not know what deal she made, what occured -- when I left in the morning to seek them out, I found myself falling from the sky into the Oasis, and my wings had turned into fins.” She has spent so much time here since then that she thinks she might know every inch of the Oasis, every rock and every creature within the waters. “The witch -- she came one night, in the form of a land-horse. She told me that my mate was foolish, and that she is now dead, and that my daughter was now hers. That I would be trapped in here forever.” When she shows her teeth, it is not a smile, could not ever be mistaken for a smile with those sharp knives displayed the way they are, ready to slice into flesh should she be given the chance. “She was mistaken. I will escape, and I will hunt her down to the ends of the ocean if I must, if it is the only way I will get my daughter back, and I will rip her throat out for ever daring to believe she could take my daughter and my mate from me and still survive.” There is no room for doubt in her voice, only the cold surety that what she has spoken of will come to pass, that the witch will feel her teeth on her throat in the last moments of her life, and that her sweet Varian would be able to come back home with her. “There will always be those who seek to oppress the weak, because there is something inside them that seeks the fulfillment of their empty souls.” Despite the anger of her previous words, there is only kindness when her muzzle brushes across Seraphina’s knee, an attempt at comfort in such trying times. “Solterra is strong, and the sands do not forget that strength, only bide their time until the moment is right. There will be a time where Raum is only a distant memory, and his atrocities will serve as a reminder and a warning for the next foolish tyrant who dares to challenge the desert.” |
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