Force-claiming is allowed here once a week per character, as is blocking force-claims by the Peak/Lagoon (as a whole) once a week. Rollover is on Sundays.
| SHENZI like the flame in the sun |
| It was instinctive, as soon as she caught movement in her peripheral vision, the way her body tensed, the way her heart stuttered in her chest. But with a snort of fury, she did not shy away from the mare who dared lay claim upon her, nor did she turn to flee in an attempt to keep her own freedom. While her shoulder still smarted from where the stranger’s teeth had pinched at the skin there, Shenzi lunged forward in retaliation, seeking to place a nip upon the silver-maned minx’s own body, somewhere upon her proudly arching neck. It was not so much a challenge as it was a statement; whoever this woman was, Shenzi would not be pushed around. She was not some meek, needy thing who’d quickly drop to bended knee. But even as she seethed, the mare was already speaking, acknowledging in her own way that she’d seen something of the fire that roared within the scarred brown mare.
Even so, Shenzi still found her lip curling, the beginnings of contempt flickering in her eyes. “I wish only to be accepted as all I am,” she bit out a reply, her own voice husky, where the stranger’s had been velvety. “Acknowledged for all I can be, without being shaped for some purpose. I have a purpose, I just--” haven’t found it yet. It eluded her, as did the belonging she so keenly sought. Infuriating, it was. Shenzi swallowed another snarl, focused instead on the rest the silver bay had said: The Arch. Tinuvel. The barb mare was no stranger to the northern island. Though her time upon its shores had been short-lived, the biting cold had been unappealing, and her perception of the place as a whole was, in truth, coloured a little by her opinion of Solomon. She had thrived on Salem, and couldn’t have been happier to live in the Dunes instead of the Cove, but the manner of her arrival upon the shores of Salem (as well as what had followed shortly after – a loss that she still felt keenly) did not sit well with the mare to this day. Her gaze darkened as she regarded the mare, but before she had a chance to form any real opinion, Shenzi’s attention was drawn to another, a young brute charging towards them. He reeked of the Lagoon, and as Shenzi registered this, whatever his purpose in approaching had already failed. Poor thing, his efforts doomed from the very start. But then he had to go and open his smug little mouth. Shenzi felt the heat of her anger rippling beneath her skin, and she recoiled, not in timidity or fear, but in repulsion. She couldn’t understand how the Lagoon had come to be so reviled. Her only experiences with the bachelors thus far had been crippled old men who took advantage of injured mares, and cocky young stallions whose senses were overshadowed by their bravado. It was an insult, in her eyes, compared to the bachelors she’d run with before she’d made her way to the islands. Shenzi snapped as he drew nearer, ready to lay into him. “Nenda kuzimu,” she spat, ears pinned and eyes flashing dangerously. “I need nothing, least of all a boy driven by hormones,” The nerve of it. She moved to circle, shooting a furtive glance to the mare with her halo of silver. It was not a cry of help, but rather an offer extended – a chance for the mare to prove herself to Shenzi. If they were anything alike, it would soon be made clear. But would the mare stay and take a stand, or would she slink off into the shadows from whence she’d come? “How little you must know of the world,” Shenzi rumbled, a barking laugh trembling in the air between them. With an arch of her neck, muzzle low to protect the scars that laced her throat, the barb mare sized him up. “What could you know of warriors, youngling?” Still, Shenzi shifted, watching and waiting. And suddenly – the question barely having left her lips, the seal bay mare lunged, turning her fury into force, and she brought it down upon the stallion, for no other reason than he was a target, and he had taunted her. As good as offered himself up for the taking, in Shenzi’s eyes. She went in with her teeth over her hooves, for it was a more personal, primal thing. Went straight for the throat – where else? And even as she engaged in confrontation with the golden stallion, Shenzi did not forget the mare, who’d offered possibilities that Shenzi was hesitant to accept without some kind of reassurance. After all, she’d been burned one too many times by now, and fire on fire only ended up leaving ash and bones behind. |