Welcome to Gaia! ::

Imagine if you can, what the embodiment of pride would look like. If your eyes immediately turned to me you would be correct. My name is Siebold and this is my tale.
A little while before I was born my mother was a servant to a great house of the Unseelie Court. She was hand maiden to the Queen, a great and powerful mare who loved to create problems then solve them in her own way. Ways that usually involved death and destruction. *He stops and chuckles* At times I wondered if she was my true mother, but I digress. This queen was a monster who enjoyed breaking her playthings.
One day a few years after she was made queen she found herself in love, if such an evil creature can love, with a stallion lord from another part of the court. She had never truly loved her current 'mate' and dearly wanted to be with her true love. So she planned his death and wanted to pin it on her hand maiden. My mother... *He grimaces angrily*
The idea was to kill her mate and leave the weapon near my mother, well something happened that the queen did not expect. My mother had already been with her current mate. More than once. The early signs of pregnancy were beginning to show. The queen flew into a rage. No one cheated on her! *He scoffs*
My mother was scared stiff but her paramour wasn't. He jumped in front of her. The king protecting a lowly servant. The queen had lowered her head as she charged, sharp horns aimed to kill. They went clean through his heart, the king was dead before he knew it.
As his body fell my mother came alive, screaming over her lost love. This alerted the court guards who came in to see the mess. The queen was hauled away to await trial but my mother was inconsolable. Her love was gone, lost to her forever. She left the castle soon afterwards. After a long and arduous journey she found her way to the Kawanii lands and gave birth to me. Her journey had taxed her severely. She was malnourished and broken of heart and spirit. After the midwife had placed me in my basket she passed away. Her body too far gone to recover. The midwife unsure of what to do with me passed me to her soquili, a kind and loving mare who treated me well but was smothering. Two months after my emergence from the basket I ran from her.
That's when I found the kalona. The mare was mourning her dead child when I met her. She took one look at me and claimed her son had come back from the dead. She was deranged but I found the situation useful. I integrated myself among her family. Her mate, an ulun'suti stallion took an immediate dislike of me but the mare would not listen. "Of course he's Siebold! You're delusional!" I would just nod and smile. It was too easy. Years later I killed him.
That too was easy. He was old and frail by then. The mare didn't care. She would never blame me. I was her angel and nothing less. 'Mother' was blind to my faults. My pride. My anger. My hatred.
I was a prince of the Unseelie court. Death was my forte and I didn't even know it. As I grew so too did my pride. If someone insulted me I killed them. If someone bothered me I killed them. Death came easily.
Then one day death visited me. The mare who cared for me, called me son. The only one I could say I loved was torn from me. A uni-kalona, deranged and starving attacked her as she wandered the forest. She died at his hooves and he ate from her body. To me that was the ultimate desecration. I attacked him, but he was young and spry, if insane. The fight raged for a long time until he pushed me to the edge of a cliff. With a few more strikes I fell. He must have assumed I died because he did not pursue me.
I had opened my wings but too late. My body crashed into the water and I sunk. I should have died, but some twist of fate brought me to the shore. I never saw that uni-kalona again, but I am still looking. I failed to protect her that day and my pride suffered for it.
One day I will find him and he will know true pain... That is a promise. *The stallion's eyes faintly glow as he walks away*

As the Carousel spins, somewhere lost in the crowds stands a mare. One looking upon her would assume some sort of royalty, but the tale of this mare is a long sad story and not one that is easily told.

Standing before the lights of the Carousel she sighs. Her eyes following its motion but not really seeing it. The endless spiral made her think back to her time in the Seelie Court.
She remembered how her suitors spun and twirled her around the dance floor. Every soquili from great and powerful Angeni to darkly handsome Hippogryphs. She loved it, loved the attention.
She'd been born to a small family of merchants. Well off but not someone you'd look twice at. As she grew from filly to young adult it became apparent that she was uncommonly beautiful, not something normally encountered outside of the Royal Seelie Court. Though her father, a kind loving flutter stallion tried he could not keep the boys away from her. He was terribly worried they would talk her into doing something foolish that would ruin future marriage prospects. He only wanted his daughters happiness. He always feared driving her away. She was all he had left after all.
His mate had died of a wasting sickness years ago, and his son had been conscripted to the army. The artistic young flutter'suti had died during his first sortie. The news had hit his daughter the hardest. Her brother was the one she was closest to.
She went into a depression and started flinging herself at stallions trying to fill the hole in her heart that her brother left.
That was when she met the Kalonageni. He was suave, oily. Always saying one thing but meaning another. He easily swept the Seelie mare off her hooves. She was in love and nothing her father did could change that. So he did the only thing he could. He challenged the Kalonageni to a duel.
Of course an aged stallion had no chance against a younger, more spry opponent but he had to try. The duel went too far and her father died.
The Seelie mare flung herself upon his prone form and wailed. Naturally the Kalonageni took advantage of this and explained he had no choice. The mare was so broken after so much loss that she easily fell into his clutches. He used her father's immense wealth and fashioned himself as a king, enjoying everything he bought but largely ignoring the mare unless she came crawling to his side for comfort.
He continued this song and dance with her for a long time until he grew tired of it. Tired of her. Though she was still beautiful, he had no intention of starting a family with her, never had in the first place. Her wealth was all he wanted.
The wasting disease her mother had died from, a poison tailor made by his families alchemist. Her brothers sudden drafting to the army, his doing. Now her father too was dead at his hooves. All was working out as planned.
Something he hadn't planned however was that during his neglectful years of using her she had fallen madly in love with another. Oddly the Kalonageni, when he found out, felt a jealousy rising within him. She wasn't supposed to fall in love with another!
He caught her with the other, a kindly looking unicorn. In a fit of rage the Kalonageni slew him, but little did he know she was pregnant with the unicorns children.
In fear the Seelie mare fled from him, far away and across the sea. Months she was on the run, the Kalonageni hot on her heels, until she was too gravid to flee anymore.
She found a midwife, a sweet tempered alicorn, and with her help gave birth to three foals. As was the custom in the Soquili lands the foals were placed in baskets to develop further.
The midwife congratulated her on the children and let her sleep for a time. When the midwife came to the next morning the mare was gone but the baskets remained. Though the midwife never knew why the Seelie mare had left her children she chose to raise them as her own for she'd always wanted children of her own.

To this day the Seelie mare still runs from the Kalonageni. The cycle endless, like that of the carousel.

Standing quietly, she stood, aloof, watching the fair and thinking of what had brought her to this place, this strange moment in time. Her cohort stood near, not speaking either. She did not know what was on his mind, and in that moment, she didn't care. All she cared about was her brother. She was, to be honest, sad, for she had not seen hide nor hair of him here, but she had heard word, more then once, that she could find what she sought here... And all who knew her knew that all she sought was her brother.

Her little brother... It had been so long, so very long since she had seen him. He'd been born when she was just a young filly, and she had resented him. He had usurped her position as the spoiled youngster, and she felt her family did not care for her anymore. To be fair, she acknowledged in her mind, they HAD been very focused on him, for he had been ill and weak. She, however, was far too young to understand this, let alone to see why he needed them more then her... And her aunts and uncles, who could have helped ease the sorrow for her, had focused on him too.

She had felt an outsider in her own home, and started spending more time away from the others, aloof as she was now, really. She had tried to ignore all of this, pretend she no longer cared for them, but inside it festered like a boil. In the meantime, she studied the family lore, and how to fight to protect them all.

And then came the day her brother came looking for her. She glared at him, and snapped "What do you want?" He had looked confused, upset, but simply said "To play with you... You never come to see me, and Mama tells me how strong and clever you are... I wanted to play, but she said you was busy. So I came myself." She stared at her brother, and then growled "Well as you can see, I am, as mother says, Studying. I am far too busy to play with you." She expected him to run off, crying. She'd probably get in trouble, but who cared

Instead, he beamed and said "Tell me what you're studying, maybe? I wanna learn too, but Mama never lets me, saying I'll get too stressed!" She glowered, and muttered "You'd understand nothing of it!" However, to shut him up, and hopefully get him to leave, she began to read aloud what she was studying. After awhile, she glanced over, wondering when he'd go, and found he'd fallen asleep, next to her. She snorted, annoyed, but soon mother came and brought him back to where he slept. This began to occur everyday, and eventually, she just snorted and began to read when he came to sit besides her.

One day, when he fell asleep, his head fell to land on her flank. She stared, part of her expecting herself to feel affronted, but the rest just going '... this is nice.' She frowned, and tried to pretend, as usual, to be irritated by it when her mother came. But this too began to be a regular thing, and she, in her heart, realized she wanted this. Until the day he didn't come when he usually did. She waited, until finally, hurt but trying to pretend not to care, she went looking for him. He was crying and glared at her. "MAMA says you don't want me there an' I can't come anymore. I thought you loved me and you wanted to read to me!" She gaped, startled, then, without thinking, she snarled back "WHY would I want to read to a spoiled brat like you?!"

... And he ran. With those words, her poor little brother ran away. It broke the heart of her parents, and, shockingly to her, her own. Now, she spends her life seeking him, desperate to fix what she had, so accidentally, spoiled. But he wasn't here either...