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Post by sansatine on Jan 15, 2017 22:24:31 GMT -6
A Beacon Below the Waves Aslan and Rasza Winter of Year 1699 A Stormy night on the Kiephis Shores
The rain was light and feathery when Aslan departed the southern part of Inaria. He thought in the back of his head that flying in this weather would be easy and at the least that it would strengthen him. Flying was easy for him but one doesn't always get blessed with clear skies and minimal wind. What started out as a strength-building exercise quickly became less of an exercise and more of a fight. He went to land but as he got closer to the surface, it wasn't solid. Aslan's hooves were submerged before he realized he wasn't over land.
With one powerful downward gust, Aslan returned to the sky though the downpour. Water flew up and down and he had lost his way. He went higher into the sky and tried to find some sort of land. Searching was difficult- the stallion would finally focus his vision only to blink water out of his eyes and start the process again. His attention was so focused below that the air around him was null. He didn't feel the electricity building around him. Suddenly a strike of lightening appeared on his right side, just outside the tip of his wing.
Aslan was spooked, and while he watched the lightening retract, he let himself be taken by the wind. His left wing was forced down and he was falling. The stallion tried to push himself up again, but he was completely at the goddess's mercy. She and Alya must be fighting because this storm was hellish. Aslan was lost in prayer, asking Cascade for strength, but still as focused and helpless as ever.
Before he could even turn his head fully to look, his wing was smashed into the water. His head soon thereafter, and he didn't remember the rest of his body submerging. Everything was black and quiet. As time spread and grew longer, pressure built. It seemed that he was falling forever- and maybe he was.
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Post by strixx-variaa on Jan 15, 2017 23:56:12 GMT -6
She swings out wide on the undercurl of a wave and laughs, or she would have laughed, but she's breathing the water and it doesn't make much of a sound in her throat. She feels light up here, and free. The water isn't so dense here, you see, and to her it feels like flying. Just below the violent surface, a fiery light shines. Its glow diffuses through the inky depths, churned and troubled as they are by the rage of that awful tempest, and its originator delights to see the light shining and refracting from the walls of a million little bubbles in the wake of each great wave. This is a vision of godliness, and a treat. And a surprise, too, because as she lets the current carry her closer and closer to shore and through shallower and shallower waters, the mare flat on her back beneath the waves in a cloud of black hair thick and wild as weed and with a grin on her face to rival the death rigors of a frozen man, she hears a tumultuous noise (to rival the steady roar and crash of the water around her, a sound which she has come to know and love almost as dearly as she loves the silence of the deep). She gasps a breath of storm, reveling in the rarity of this water's warmth and spirit.It is the storm-bringer, fallen. Her eyes grow wide as watches the distant silhouette of a wind-walker sink through the plane separating his realm from hers, hidden from her by the bubbles of air which cling to him with desperation until the water washes them back whence they came. He is massive.He is dead?It is with quite another shock that the mare realizes she was wrong -- her long body slinks and curls through the upper atmosphere of her watery world as it fights to disturb her line, but she must investigate him, and when she finally reaches his side she sees his body still convulsing. Not dead!
Dying. And it took a while, too, because she feels about half his size and his wings work like sails beneath the sea, hanging limp and catching all the roiling water she wishes would just wash through, but eventually she's able to force his body above the break. She rides the current with newfound company now, her face buried in hair and pressed against his neck or his back or his shoulder or wherever the waves jumble them about, and the hair's not all hers because here's a streak of grey and that doesn't belong to me. Her long, slender eel's tail beats furiously below, its light marking the sweeping motion in a berserk little dance as she uses it to keep his weight afloat. It has been some time now since the playful current ran them both aground, and she's pushed his body as far as she could past the storm's high water but the waves didn't help her any and she wonders if he was meant for the sea after all. She watches him from some yards away, having resolved to stay with him until she sees him wake so that the storm doesn't choke him and finish what it started. Her eyes are just clear of the surface as the storm rolls away. Only the top half of her head and the very tip of her tail are truly exposed; her topline would be clear if the water stilled, but it dances still in the wake of the storm. She watches from above the waterline like a crocodile, so that her sight is unimpeded; she keeps the lighted lure at her tail's end between them on the wet sand so that she may see his face and barrel in the black of night. He is dead?She does not dare investigate a second time. words: 650 tags: sansatine notes: i wrote more than i meant to, sorry T_T i always do this my first post, subsequent ones will be less rambly and more direct i promise |
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Post by sansatine on Jan 16, 2017 12:02:29 GMT -6
Aslan
The stallion that was so large and so moving before was still now, breathing too faint to see. He felt wind on his flank- or maybe that was a current. Aslan tried to move, but he was caged in his own body. He again faded out, but not before seeing a small red light. It was faint and equally pale, but it was there. A beacon below the waves. Minutes later, though it felt like seconds, he was on shore. This was wind. With several aggressive coughs, the stallion opened his eyes. Not dead, but not really alive, or at least that's how he felt. His entire body ached, but he sat up anyway. Coughing still, he lifted sea weed and debris off of himself. Aslan slowly but suddenly got on his feet, but not without coughing more. His back was to the water and his wings were not folded to his sides, but limp on the floor still. The Pegasus folded his left wing in with some soreness, but the right one still lay on the sand unknown to him. Aslan spread his wings and pushed himself up, only to come falling back down. As he stood again, he realized his right wing hadn't moved. It was numb and tingling. In a flash, he remembered his wing was struck. In his mind, he thanked Cascade for saving him when Alya had struck him, but he said nothing. It was then he realized something was watching. Aslan studied the wilds in front of him. No eyes gleamed from their depths. Then he turned, very, very slowly. Under the water was the red glow, watching him. He approached it again, too curious for his own good, wing leaving a line in the sand. When the water was to his knees, the light was still a ways out. He stayed where he was, wing floating beside him. Aslan was still again, watching.320 |
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Post by strixx-variaa on Jan 16, 2017 16:45:56 GMT -6
She lost track of the time she spent there in the shallows, watching him. Or rather, she would've lost track of the time had she attempted to keep track of it at all, but time had always seemed a sort of divine concept to her anyways, and so she'd merely remained still in the water, letting her watery breaths flow through her gills without counting how many she took. The moon was low already when he began to stir. Beneath the surface, her teeth touched the water in a childlike grin. The mare watched him rise from the sand, and noted how his wings hung. One of them appeared not to be in the mood to listen to its owner. Alya's mischief, thought the mare. And more of it coming, too, as she realized that he had spotted her and was following her light. Rasza's instinct was to back away, treading water with her tail and pushing off the sea bed with her forelegs in order to propel herself backwards into deeper water, her lure still flickering and dancing between them in the water. He had waded in up to his knees when she realized -- this is not the way. She was tired from her swim and tired from being tired (as she was almost always), and so maybe that's why the pieces didn't fit together at first, but they did now. She'd never seen one of his kind, not a real flesh-and-blood one, but here he was and there was something funny about that wing -- and wasn't her duty to tend to him? Her retreat ceased. She drew the lighted lure close to her now, letting it float on the surface to illuminate her dark shape against the blackness of the water. The mare heard his silence and liked it enough to end it. Her dished head tilted on the axis of her neck, her ears slanted off to her left and her throat exposed from the right. Hair hung from her crest like a tattered curtain as her lips lifted from the waves. "Are you broken?" words: 350 tags: sansatine notes: ❤ |
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Post by sansatine on Jan 16, 2017 22:31:01 GMT -6
Aslan
Aslan had met his savior in the water. Unknown to him, though, that she had saved him. Face to face, they stood unmoving and silent for a moment. Then she lifted her head and asked if he was broken. His relaxed face went into annoyance. Broken? No, he wasn't broken. The stallion Flicked his tail before gathering the words to reply. "No. Not broken. Where am I? Is this Kiephis?" he asked her. The Pegasus's wings burned slightly at the thought. He was in the one place he couldn't be, but Cascade and her sea brought him here, away from Alya's storm. "Who are you, what is your name?" he added, wishing to know this watcher in the water. Aslan turned and walked to the shore, stepping high as he normally did but because of the waves now. It was dark, but the moon hung low and the sun would come soon, maybe then he would actually see this black mass for what they were, faint light still glowing. Aslan studied the skies and deciphered the way he needed to go to return to Inaria. Remembering his attempt at escape just moments ago, he looked to his right. The massive wing still laid in a heap at his side. He wasn't leaving soon, at least not without medical assistance. "I need help." The stallion declared, sacrificing his pride. 230 |
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Post by strixx-variaa on Jan 17, 2017 9:33:27 GMT -6
Is this Kiephis?Rasza giggled like a schoolgirl, the sound soft and light and silly. Broken, broken. It sounded like the sort of thing she'd have said if she'd been caught without the few hours of sleep she'd secured the night before last. And then the sound of her laughter ceased suddenly, as if stoppered up in her throat by a dirty gag -- because what if it'd been on purpose?A wave of guilt washed over her like the warm sea in which she bathed. Her expression changed entirely, the amusement melting off her face to leave only a blank stare and a worried eye. It would have been clean, she thought, contemplating the suicide she now assumed he'd meant to commit, either by drowning or by the state-imposed penalty for winged trespassers upon the Holy Ground. Her heartstrings having been officially played with an expert hand by this stranger who perhaps did not realize his aptitude for the instrument, Rasza's nature and training compelled her to follow him onto the beach. The shift of her shape was a struggle, and she scrabbled for a moment in his wake as she fought to force legs where a tail had ruled for so long. With a grunt, she succeeded. The mare had to be four-legged for most of her work in the Holy City's imbued atmosphere, that was true, but she'd always been the sort of weak, stubborn finned child who had trouble with the shift no matter how often she had to make it. Thin, spindly legs carried her from the water in his hoofprints, and as she drew nearer to the colossal stallion she heard him speak again. "Mm-mm," she replied, taking his admission as fact. His body was novel to her, and so was he. The light from her tail warmed the sand beneath their hooves as she drew closer to his injured wing, keeping her eyes on his, silently asking his permission to examine his cursed flesh. words: 333 tags: sansatine notes: ahhh, i didn't realize you posted this in the kiephis board! since it's an underwater city, i figured we can be on a tiny island, maybe? not terribly far from shore? and if he'll let her, she'll want to see how the wing flexes and if he has any muscle control in it at all. you can write her doing that if you like ❤ |
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