[P] Fire in my soul

[Luvena]

Flames roaring through the forest. Ashes floating to the ground. Smoke clogging lungs. The feeling of it crawling down her throat. 

Salt spray in her face woke her, stinging as she opened her eyes, only to feel a splitting pain start from her head and move all the way down her spine.  She had felt it coming on a few hours earlier and laid down to try and fend it off. apparently she had fallen asleep, and also, it hadn't worked. 
She had struggled the past year. Despite having spent so much of her life weak and ill, she had adjusted to health very quickly. She had been content being able to run through fields without collapsing after. Or going a week, a month, a year, with no pain or headaches. Adjusting back after... had been a little harder.  It still wasn't as bad as it had been. after all, she had been granted immortality by Vega just as she was letting out her last breath. 
Taking a moment to let the shock of the pain subside, she let out a deep sigh, before sticking her legs out and hauling herself to her feet. She shuddered slightly in attempt to shake off the moisture accumulated by the spray of the waves. The Prastigia cliffs were not a place one would expect to find the frail mare with it's hazardous drops and terrain. She knew it wasn't exactly the best place for her to be, but she came anyways, for the familiarity. It was so much like the cliffs where she had first met Io Kairavi. Her sister in all but blood. 
She stood there for a few moments before turning away from the sea, meaning to slowly make her way back to the fields, where it would be slightly warmer. She picked her way slowly across the cliffs, trying to ignore the pounding in her head, and the ache of her body.  She stopped in her tracks as she noticed a figure in the distance. She let out a nervous whinny as a greeting, hoping to feel out the situation by how the stranger answered. 

@Marisol

[Marisol]

i'm not weeping, i'm not complaining
happiness is not for me.

The cliffs are unusually cold today. Winter is coming on bright-white wings; a years-old wind sweeps up salt and foam from the crashing waves; as Marisol soars in toward the edge of the cliff, her muscles tighten against the cold, like so many sailor’s knots, and her breath swirls into the frosty air in plumes of faint, soft steam. From up here the world looks mostly calm. In some places it is tinged white with hoarfrost. In others, the trees burn in bright swaths of red and ochre.

And there, just on the edge of the world, a figure starts to move. Just a little speck from here, pulsing like a heartbeat. Marisol pushes her wings back against the salty wind and begins her descent. The ground rushes toward her; with every passing second she plummets closer and closer to the rocky ground until it looks like nothing more than a blur of gray, and now she can sea that the figure lying in the field is splashed in tan and slate. It is not a figure she recognizes. 

Marisol would be suspicious, but the feeling is drowned out by an overwhelming wave of concern. Whoever this person is, they are in need of help. Their ribs and hips are prominent through thin, dull, skin; the turquoise eyes are sort of washed out, grayish like they’ve been put through bleach. It’s strangely unsettling. Mari’s heart aches in sympathy. Even the Commander, too wary for her own good, does not have the strength to refuse help to someone like this.

With a brief beating of wings she comes to a sudden, unsteady stop in the stubby grasses of the cliffs just ahead of the stranger. The jolt sinks from her hooves through her bones and all the way up her legs, but she does not flinch. Just lets a brief, harsh whoosh of air out through her nostrils. 

“Are you alright?”
“Speaking.”

credits

[Luvena]

Luvena

She trained her eyes on the figure above. Its wings beat gracefully, effortlessly, against the strong winds that came off the raging waters. Then like a crane diving for its prey, the figure dove. Luvena took a few steps back, her heart racing. She didn't know the people here. I didn't know how they took to strangers.  The appearance of the mare caught her eye quickly. She was striking. Dark bay, nothing remarkable there. But the underside of her wings was beautifully spotted.  

She could feel the mares blue gaze examining her, and she became quickly aware of her appearance. She was out of place her. A frail figure among the sound of a strong sea. She couldn't be sure, but she felt that this was someone important.  Squaring her feet she looked up ahead at the mare, meeting her gaze.  She pulled her neck into as much of an arch she could manage, with her head pounding, before clearing her throat to answer. 

"Quite" she replied, forcing herself to raise her soft voice over the wind and waves. "Why do you ask?" It wasn't like her to be so bold, and the question had the hint of a challenge in it.  But she had already been asked by everyone she had met here, and she felt the need to make it clear that she was capable of handling herself. and earning their respect here, as she had eventually done in Elysium.  It had taken a long time back then, and this time, she hoped the process would be a little faster.  She didn't enjoy being an object of pity, even though it was true that she wasn't exactly well.

However, though she wanted the respect of her peers here, she did not want to seem unfriendly, or harsh. "Luvena Xiaoli" she introduced herself.  The name Xialoi felt foreign on her tongue after all this time. But talking to Caelum had made her decide to start using it once again.  To take back what was hers, even though it would never hold the same power it had for her mother and father.  "I'm rather new here. I  have yet to meet many people."

@Marisol

Table © Camy

[Marisol]

i'm not weeping, i'm not complaining
happiness is not for me.

The girl steps back as Marisol lands, and briefly she feels quite guilty for scaring her: it already looks as if she could be knocked over by a strong wind, and being startled like this certainly can’t help. Hooves meeting the storm-torn dirt, Mari folds her wings into her sides as quickly as she can. Instead of stepping forward, as is her instinct, she forces herself to stay where she’s landed at least until they are introduced.

At once, the stranger pulls herself together, squaring her hooves, raising her head; her eyes are dull even in the stormy light that glints off the sea, and her ribs are showing through her sides, little divots of light and shadow. Marisol’s mouth twists. She is a warrior by nature, sure, but not without a heart. With every second she watches, Mari finds herself more and more eager to help.

She wants to step forward. She wants to offer food, water, shelter, everything. But then the girl says she is quite alright, and although Mari alights with incredulity, one brow almost, almost rising as if in disbelief, she says nothing. Offers nothing. If she thinks she is fine, so be it—Marisol hardly has time to help those who need it, much less those who don’t.

Still, there is a dull kind of disappointment in her chest. A pale, steady beat, throbbing in opposite time to her pulse. 

Or maybe it’s pity. Sometimes, she’s heard it said, a predator with a broken foot will chase their dinner for miles just trying to prove they are not really crippled. Maybe this is something like that.

“Call it morbid curiosity,” Marisol says dryly. She does not miss the sharp edge in the girl’s tone, much less the way she structures the question as though it were a challenge. So be it, then—she has been in far too many fights to back down from one now. 

I have yet to meet many people. Ah—there it is. Her suspicions were indeed correct. And perhaps (though Marisol doesn’t like to admit), because of that, the stranger—no, Luvena—deserves a little less defensiveness on the part of her queen. 

The Commander forces her shoulders to relax and sweeps out one wing into something like a bow, brief and instinctive as blinking. “Marisol,” she introduces, and bites back the urge to add queen or commander or both. She'd figure it out soon enough.

“Speaking.”

credits