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Cheska
holy light, burn the night, keep the spirit strong
Cheska had been left entirely unscathed by recent events, remaining unaware of the vaguest hint of darkness cast upon the lands. To her, Helovia was a rather fortuitous discovery, filled with all manner of strange and wonderful creatures. Its façade remained untarnished by cruelty or death. Here, she had met only kind faces and gentle hearts, and she'd heard little talk of recent events. It left her blissfully ignorant, free to tell her tales without recent context to compromise them and to wander without fear for her safety. She had taken full advantage.
The day had been spent exploring, as many of her free days were. She couldn't resist the call of warm wind and a chance to tangle up her mane with further explorations by shoving her head wherever it would fit. True to form, she'd managed to invade a poor starling's private time and been well and justly assaulted by flapping wings and an angry beak for her trouble. She'd managed to choke down a few of the bright clusters of violet flowers that had blinked at her from every corner. She'd even engaged a tree in a climb-off (neither of them had successfully climbed the other, ending in a decided stalemate). As her adventures had come to an end, she found evening quickly casting a gentle flush of red and orange over the meadow.
She knew she ought to find shelter for the evening, but for now, a sturdy oak got the job done nicely. She folded her legs beneath her, finding familiarity in the position. These were the kind of evenings that she would curl herself up under a safe tree and wait for her inevitable companion. Without fail, her daughter would trot up and flop into her side, demanding a story or a back scratch, at the very least. Cheska, indulgent a mother as any, would always oblige her. The memory made her burn. She'd buried that wound too quickly without letting it heal, and now it ached under the weight of her own cheerful disguise. Surely, growing up was the most spiteful thing a child could do to her parent.
Cheska had endeavored never to grow up.
She wiggled against the bark, the mild pain pulling her back to the present. Perhaps she'd spend the evening here, she thought, basking in her memories. Maybe she'd close her eyes, ignore the inherent danger of being alone, just for one moment…
count] 405
tags] @[Spice] first, then open
ooc] This is a bedtime story thread.
◊ please tag Cheska in all posts
◊ full permission is granted for minor powerplays including
touching, placement and superficial injury
| Hidden Account |
| Mare :: Pegasus :: 15 hh :: 2 years |
| Wayne :: Zebra Finch :: None Sage |
She didn't want to make it a habit of running around and not taking care of duties back in the Throat...
But it appeared inevitable in her own case. She was now walking through a dense wood, a place she supposed was the possible edge of the Threshold, which she had skirted quite nicely, if she did say so herself. She looked up to the sky, the sun about at the mid-point she tucked her dappled crown back in and kept on wandering. Why not? She would find her home sometime, or at least someone to guide her.
~+~
It was then when she needed aid, the sun had decided to sink faster than her mind planned, leaving her in the struggling sunset of flames cast upon the evening. The girl had decided to take flight, but little did she know that this place of dread and doom would befall her decision of path. She didn't know what they where, but they where sticky and purple and ugh.
The girl kinda just wanted to throw up.
This was where she was taken by a glass mare and a dappled man. Where she was mended together again in the pouring rain. Where she was blinded by some of her first pain. She was afraid of getting hurt again, and who wouldn't? Someone fearless. She wasn't fearless, nor painless. The memory of the purple things stuck to her mind as they had stuck to her coat that wet evening.
When landing, she had taught herself to tilt her wings a certain way. To get the wind to glide off them quickly and not to catch. So that she could glide down easily with no threat of injury. She tried this here, deciding that it was a good call, because night was to fall upon her soon and she didn't make it a plan to be alone and hurt again in the darkness.
Her hoof steps where loud and careless, a finger of a low twig rubbing up into her mane where she jumped at the feeling of a rough finger on her neck. Ears twitching forward she listens for sounds that may be lurking in the last lights of the evening.
She heard something.
Another's foot steps, perhaps? She hoped so. Not someone scary like in the stories her mother would tell her before bed, not someone kind on the outside and evil on the inside (of her candy house, that is). And defiantly not someone who thought sneaking around was a priority. Poking her head into the thistles and out again, she sees her. A mare. She is beautiful in her own way, kind of like her mother is some views.
Spice is eager to talk to her. Though, now having all these stories of her mother's in her mind, fresh and clean, she wonders of the possibilities of this mare. Could she be a giant troll, ready for an attack on the Queen of Terabithia? Or was that just a tale as well? In light hoof steps she makes her way onward towards the mare, swallowing her pain and fear, she speaks. "Hello ma'am". The words remind her of how she would speak to her Mother a lot. Like in the morning, "goodmorning Mother." Or in the mid-day time when they ate, "Hello Mother" she would always dare herself to ask her Mother to tell her a story before the darkness of the world came.
Now it was just a kind gesture to a new friend.
Spice wanted to keep it that way.
"Talk Talk Talk"
I don't mean to judge...
♦
•
| Hidden Account |
| Mare :: Equine :: 16.2 :: 8 |
| Ducky |
Cheska
holy light, burn the night, keep the spirit strong
There was a rush of warm air not so far away, but her drowsy mind didn't immediately process it as any kind of threat. Instead, it was like the wind in a fond memory, comforting in its familiarity. It was a wind from a time before she knew that there was such a creature as a pegasus. But that was a time that was more complicated, more horror story than fairy tale, and she tried to let it fade back into the depths of her mind before it could haunt her further. Now, she was simple. She knew her place (sort of) and she was whole (almost) and the pain was a distant memory (usually). She was infinitely grateful for the approaching sound of hooves that shook her back to reality. She blinked heavy eyelids once, twice.
Momentarily, the figure of her daughter appeared to her, years younger and winged like a bird. Her addled brain shot the message to her eager heart, but as quickly as it soared, it went crashing to the ground. Another blink, and the shape of her Kyrie rolled away like a morning fog to reveal the little pegasus. She inhaled on the stab of pain in her chest, then exhaled it all in a soft chuckle. It was all she knew. The icy cold of her disappointment was quickly melted by the warm relief of companionship. She fired off a little prayer of thanks to Spark God, who she'd once heard credited as the patron of "fortuitous meetings." Assuming this meeting was fortuitous.
Maybe she should have known to scramble to her feet, but Cheska found herself far too weary to panic at the sight of a lone filly. She was not the first young one Cheska had found alone. The culture was different here, and foals wandered alone and unafraid. In fact, there were more young ones here than she'd seen in many moons. She'd had at least a few years on nearly every one she'd met. Maybe it should have made her feel old, but instead she was embracing her inner child. All her stories had come back to her like she'd heard them yesterday. All her silliness and naïveté was flooding in again. Maybe part of her missed that jaded, quicksilver tongue of hers, but mostly she was grateful for the new beginning.
She gave the girl a quick twice over. Once to ensure she hadn't missed any particular sign of danger, then again to check her for any injury or distress. "Hello, miss," she finally replied. Her voice was husky from disuse, accent scraping every word. "How's the weather up there?" She didn't pretend it was a particularly clever joke.
She cocked her head, partly to signal her attention, partly to make room for the winged wonder to settle down beside her, should she wish. She should have been more wary about exposing her delicate, unmagical flesh to teeth and hooves and potentially dragons, but her experience had left her soft and inattentive. "What's a little lady like yourself doin out here all on your lonesome? Won't somebody be missin you?"
count] 521
tags] @[Spice]
◊ please tag Cheska in all posts
◊ full permission is granted for minor powerplays including
touching, placement and superficial injury
| Hidden Account |
| Mare :: Pegasus :: 15 hh :: 2 years |
| Wayne :: Zebra Finch :: None Sage |
When she heard the name the woman in the dirt called her, she didn't say anything. The mare said more, and Spice mustered a giggle. Miss it reminded her all too much about her lost mother.
Or was she lost?
Did she just need to find her way home? Could this all be a dream. No. It couldn't possibly be a dream. When you dreamt, there was this feeling in the back of your mind that you can't seem to bring forth that the dream most certainly is not real. But this, it was. It really was. But she wanted to believe that she was just sleeping by her mother's side in the cold of the night. She wanted to say it was true, that she was only asleep.
But, she knew she could not.
Her heart burned with a new love for this mare in the dirt. She spoke a different way than the others. She didn't finish her words completely, but it didn't bother Spice in the slightest. "My mother is back at home" she said. But she couldn't stand still when a lie was at her lips (well, more like her throat). She just couldn't. "The home I ran away from. I couldn't stay, ma'am." She never spoke to others this way, though she did speak with respect... not this much. She found herself wanting to curl up beside her and listen to her voice tell as story as she drifted into a peaceful sleep, just as her and her mother had done so many times before.
She wondered what her mother would think right now if she could hear into Spice's mind. Would she be furious, happy, plain out upset? Maybe she just wanted Spice gone. Though, the little filly hoped that was not the case, she couldn't help it slipping her mind. It was awfully hard to un think things.
So she didn't. What she thought now, was that this mare was kind, and deserving, and already very respected by the filly. Her accent and all danced to the dappled girl's heart and to her eyes, as they filled with light. "But I am fine... she stopped for a second. "Do you know the word adventure?"
"Can you tell me an adventure story?"
"Talk Talk Talk"
I don't mean to judge...
♦
•
| Hidden Account |
| Mare :: Equine :: 16.2 :: 8 |
| Ducky |
Cheska
the warmth rang true inside these bones
Her face softened at the little one's confession. "We all have our reasons, I suppose," the mare said softly. This was not the first filly to leave her home behind, some for better reasons than others. It just seemed a shame for one so young. She was tempted to ask, but she remained tactful. "And our stories are only ours to tell." She silenced for a long while, an invitation to the young one to lay her troubles on wider shoulders for a while. Cheska did not presume everyone to be broken. Perhaps the filly really was fine. Time was a wonderful healer of such wounds.
And stories were a great distraction from them while they mended. In any case, the request was so earnest, Cheska couldn't think of turning it down. "Adventure, huh? I'm certain I know that word," she said softly, a smile setting her soft green eyes alight. "And I might have a story for it, too."
Adventure was a genre that the speckled mare rarely indulged in. It was too sumptuous, too rich for her unadorned method of storytelling. The stories she had carried nearest to her heart were tales of nature and the hearts of the brave. The tales she had woven herself were myths born from the world around her, a thread plucked from a peculiar whitewood, another from a unique animal, one or two a misremembered fable that she needed only plait details into to make anew. While her stories were a makeshift quilt, adventure tales were an intricate tapestry of characters and events. No story bubbled to the shallows of her memory immediately, but she dove into her archives and found the first filament reaching back.
Talla. The character blossomed in her mind, details rushing in like water into a hole in the sand. The spiraling horn, the massive wings, the gentle heart of Talla the Sun Bringer.
She knew the story that she would tell. "I have one… it's quite a yarn, though. Best make yourself comfortable." She inhaled, preparing to sand her tone into something steadier, the voice of a true storyteller.
"My name is Cheska, and this is the tale of how a mare named Talla saved the sun…. Well, the first time, anyway."
"There was a time, a long while ago, when the herds of a certain valley lost their faith. It was a gradual thing, prayers forgotten and stories warped over generations. Shrines were left to crumble into ruin and herds forgot their own patron gods. One herd alone remained devoted, tucked into the remote mountains. They were called the herd of the Sun Cliffs, and they paid their tributes to the Sun God faithfully. He repaid them with healthy foals and many plentiful years. He gifted them a great, warm cave in the mountainside to protect them from the punishment he would visit upon the unfaithful.
You see, though Sun God was wise, was also vain. He resented that there were no prayers, and so he decided to punish his apathetic flock. Frostfall came early that year, leaving the herds unprepared. The Sun Cliffs herd managed to retreat into its mountain cave and waited through a long, icy winter. As the days stretched into weeks and months, many below were lost to hunger or cold. But even when the first weeks of Birdsong did come, the sun did not return. The horses of the valley panicked, and soon came to the great cave for protection from the elements. The herd began to take in the outcast and weak who would not otherwise survive the storms. Food quickly grew scarce, and the lives of every creature in the valley hung in the balance.
The Sun Cliffs herd was led by a courageous unicorn stallion called Taja, and though his wind magic was powerful, he knew none of them could survive much longer without Sun God's intervention. He called upon his eldest daughter, the hybrid named Talla to seek out Sun God in his vast shrine and ask him to turn the winter to spring once more. There was none in the valley who loved Sun God more faithfully than Talla, and none more protective of the horses of the valley.
Talla chose the best of her herd mates to join her on her journey: first was her beloved companion, the brave fire dragon named Fyra. Next was her dearest friend Dryden the Excavator, the cleverest of all equines. Dryden and Talla had embarked on many an adventure in their youth, and many stories were already told of their quests. Finally, they were joined by the Amazonian pegasus mare Xandra, who would later be called the Time Keeper. She was a refugee whose mate had been lost to the cold, and she had a bone to pick with the Lord of Light, but she was undisputed in battle, and wiser than any warrior in the valley.
Taja led the party to the shrine and, using all of their powers, the opened the great door to the interior. Taja bid them good luck, and the door was closed once more.
Though the inside should have been dark, the walls glowed softly with the Sun God's power. The four followed a winding hallway to the first room of the shrine. It was massive, but the only exit was high above them on the far side. Talla and Xandra beat their mighty wings to try to reach the window, but neither could so much as rise an inch off the ground. Even the dragon Fyra could not rise more than a hover from her lady's rump. "The room is enchanted," said the Excavator. "There must be another way to proceed." The clever equine walked the perimeter until he stopped suddenly at a carving on one wall.
Dryden read them the riddle aloud:
"What has no eyes, no nose, but a face you can see?
Head high in the clouds and roots deeper than trees?
Its head can freeze and its heart may burn
If you wish to escape its name you must learn."
Xandra and Talla were stumped, and as they made their guesses, Dryden only shook his great head. "It isn't a clock and it isn't a rainbow. It could be a thundercloud, but I think… It's a mountain." Now, Dryden was given many gifts by the Earth God, but the Excavator could only dig, not build. It was he who had excavated the massive tunnels beneath their mountain to protect the Sun Cliffs from enemy attacks and give shelter to their refugees.
Xandra despaired that they could go no further, but Dryden was a crafty animal, and soon he was digging down an adjacent wall. No matter how deeply Dryden dug, the wall was deeper still. They would not be able to burrow out. Talla was quick to realize this, and to catch on to her friend's plan. She took the dirt as he removed it from the hole and began to pile it up into a mound, a ramp that would let them ascend into the next room. Fyra, too, lifted pebbles and rocks and rolled them into the pile. As their construction grew higher and higher, Dryden's digging became slower and slower. The last feet took hours.
Exhausted, the stallion sent his companions ahead while he rested.
The two mares and the little gold dragon climbed their little mountain and continued on into the next room. The floor was solid marble, but every wall was plated in shining gold, reflecting the room infinitum until they could see no exit. Weapons of every shape and size littered the room, resting against columns and piled in corners. Blood stained more than a few of the blades. It was clearly a battleground.
Across the room, the party could see two more mares, a tar black pegasus and a smoky hybrid, as well as a black dragon, staring at them seemingly without eyes.
Xandra stepped forward, and the other pegasus did the same. In an instant, they had clashed in the center of the room and arcs of electricity went crashing. Talla was quick to shield her beloved dragon from the chaos, tucking Fyra under her massive wing. From the fray above, feathers exploded downward. Talla hid her face, and when she looked back, all was still. The black hybrid and a dark dragon still stared at them, but there was no sign of Xandra or her opponent. Thinking her new friend lost, Talla reared back and then rushed at the opposing mare, who did just the same, reflecting Talla's movement stride for stride. Lowering her horn, she prepared for them to meet in the middle.
"Talla, stop!" Xandra's voice rang out in the chamber.
Talla obeyed, pulling up short of the enemy. The black mare stopped, too. Xandra stepped out from behind a near pillar, and the black pegasus stepped out across the room. "They are merely reflections." Xandra sidestepped until her own rump faced the next room. She slowly backed out, and Talla was quick to follow the same way. The black hybrid and pegasus grew further and further away, until they had receded into the shadows from whence the two mares had come.
"Did you defeat her?" Talla asked. Xandra only laughed. The pegasus was wise enough to know that sometimes victory was achieved by knowing when not to fight.
Their triumph was short-lived, for as they traveled down the next hallway, the heard a loud rumbling. They looked up to find the ceiling caving in on them, boulders crashing down from the darkness. Xandra was quick to push Talla out of the way. She used her time magic with a stomp of her foot, and the debris froze above her, leaving the passage clear for Talla to continue. She could not let the boulders fall for fear that Dryden would be trapped, nor could she hold them forever. "Go, Talla," she ordered. "Be quick about it!"
The hybrid galloped on to the next room, her hoofbeats echoing in the narrow hallways, the sound of her beloved dragon's wings in her ears.
She finally turned a corner and went rushing through a last door. Inside, the room was empty, dark and cold. There was no sign of the god she had expected to find within. Fyra comforted her companion with gentle coos, but Talla's faith was not so easily shaken. She dropped her head, closed her eyes and prayed to the god of her herd with all of her heart. She asked her god for the safe return of her friends, for the power to protect her herd. She thanked him for giving her Fyra. She hoped for his safe return.
Finally, the room was enveloped in the gold light of Sun God, and he appeared before her at last. Talla cried in relief for his safety and begged him once more to return to watch over her valley.
"I will do so," Sun God agreed mercifully, "But first you must prove that your peoples' faith in me is as strong as you say. Return to your herd, build a great fire. Then you must all return to me what has been given to you." Talla knew immediately what Sun God asked. Many seasons before, he had granted her the egg of a fierce little fire dragon... a dragon named Fyra.
By her next blink, Talla, Xandra, Dryden, and Fyra had all returned to their cave with the terrible news for the bonded among them. Some refused, denouncing the gods and leaving the cave to return to the cold with their companions. Others begged Talla to return, to try to find another way.
Those that remained helped to build a great pyre just outside the mouth of the cave. By nightfall, they had lit the fire. The companions went without question into the flames, one by one, and as they touched the first tongues of the fire, they disappeared in a flash of golden light.
The horses mourned all through the night, but at daybreak, the sun rose once again, warming them for the first time in months. The storms stilled, the snow began to melt, and grass grew green and plentiful through the valley. At midday, Sun God appeared to the brokenhearted citizens of the Sun Cliffs. He looked among their tear-stained faces and smiled, for the god had seen their hearts, and knew them to be pure and remorseful. "Your penance is completed," he announced to them. And as he opened his flaming wings, each companion appeared and returned to its bonded.
Fyra wrapped her wings around Talla and all celebrated the return of the sun together.
Sun God came to Talla's side to thank her and her friends for their sacrifice. "Your faith is great," he said to her. "From this day, all shall call you Talla the Sun Bringer, so that your story may never be forgotten."
And it never was."
count] 2157 \o/
tags] @[Spice] I'm sorry this took so long! This isn't the story I wrote for this thread, but it was a nice challenge.
◊ please tag Cheska in all posts
◊ full permission is granted for minor powerplays including
touching, placement and superficial injury
