[P] to be the sun

[Antiope]

Antiope

and fate may fall down upon you

Antiope watches as Morrighan’s bonded stands and turns away from them, moving down the hill and into the distance. At the same time the Warden speaks, explaining that they were to race to the wolf and back to their starting point. Her sapphire eyes are gemstone bright and sharp as the Regent watches the other woman carve a line of burnt grass into the snowy landscape.

The striped mare can’t relate to the almost child-like enjoyment in Morrighan’s eyes. She can’t even really place it, as something other than a freeing sort of joy. Antiope doesn’t know what it’s like to have a childhood, to be young and naive and full of wonder. Her birth was unconventional in so many ways, but especially in that she woke the exact same age that she remains now; immortal and mature. She doesn’t have parents, nor any sort of ancestors or bloodline. There are no memories in her past of being a filly and playing games as she sees other foals do around the court. Although Antiope has never really thought about it—it’s just the way things are—she can understand the idea of the things she has missed out on because of it.

Morrighan’s voice pulls her back to the task at hand, and she presses closer to the charred line on the ground. Her eyes narrow slightly, focusing on the distant shape of the Warden’s bonded, like a shadow against the snow. “One…” she says, feeling the chill of fat and lazy flakes of snow falling upon her back like a kiss of cold.

“Two,” and she is already waking the lioness inside her, letting her stretch her limbs and prowl through her veins. Her magic starts to draw upon the energy in the clouds, her eyes slowly flooding with gold. It begins to fill her like a rush of adrenaline, inundating every cell.

Then the snow has all but stopped. Nothing is left but the ocassional flake left drifting down as if not quite sure whether it is meant to fall or not. Antiope’s eyes are ichor-bright, like god blood. There is something like knowing turning up the coner of the lips as she finally releases them with a simple, “Three!” and she is moving, running, flying. She stretches her neck out and pushes her legs faster, and faster, and eats up the energy her magic has stored. Her hooves striking a war beat against the frozen ground as they pound right through the snow cover.

There is something exhilarating about being free to run, about using her magic in such a mundane, simple, harmless way. Her magic may have been given to her so that he could dominate a battlefield with ease, but Antiope wants to find new ways to use it. And if a race against Morrighan is one of those ways, it’s certainly something she can get used to.

She meets the place where Bram is sitting and digs her hooves in to the frozen earth under the snow, bunching her haunches to swing herself around. It’s impossible to say how long they’ve been running for, and Antiope barely glances aside herself to see where Morrighan is: whether she is beside her, or behind her.

As she reaches the halfway mark of their way back, she begins to loosen her grip on her magic, letting it drain slowly out of her body. Her eyes bleed from gold to keenest blue, and by the time she reaches their finishing line it’s impossible to tell that she had been using it all.

"Speaking."

@Morrighan tried to leave it pretty open ended for you

∞