The wind is always mournful.

It sings in black wings like a lover singing of a love now lost, perhaps across the hungry sea. Perhaps swallowed up... Even now cerulean waves lap far below, their little tongues much colder than their brilliant color might imply. She is familiar with such a hue; it dances in the depths of her bright eyes as the young pegasus banks and thrusts her narrow body toward land. One cannot ride the sorrow of an ocean wind forever; one cannot bask in such a feeling.

Like some empty star she falls, black on pale blue, and light streams through her long mane and tail. It plays off the feathers of her dark wings even as her toes brush lightly over sand and those wings fold with nimble grace against the girl's ribs. Her strange eyes lift to gaze across the sea and then to pierce whatever mysteries lay inland, waiting and brooding and perhaps ready to pounce. It is a strange land here. It is a warm place, full of breath and the crashing of waves. Azalea thinks of home and mountains white with rime and sighs. "Lost," she breathes - a lament for home or for herself, she isn't sure.

Just up the beach a stranger wades into cold waves. She saw the creature on descent and moves for it quietly, her gait limber and smooth. Gone are the awkwardness of youth and the imperious swagger of a growing princess. She is darkness now, a shadow slinking under sunlight, relishing the touch of cold wind in her feathers. She is something strange and foreign in this land, something ever resentful of the forces that might wish to shape her - forces lesser than the heart pounding within her breast. I am not afraid, she thinks, though the stranger is quite large. It is also pale and statuesque, and Azalea thinks she can see melancholy dripping from the slate-grey feathers and from silken hair. She is, at least, familiar with the form of wings. Her pulse beats a little slower, thick with confidence.

"Hail!" The girl's voice rings high, beaten silver honed to points. The ocean winds would steal it but she speaks too loud, and pauses well away from the creature of silence and sorrow now standing in front of her. Such an intimate emotion - she knows better than to interrupt. Azalea has ever been a beast of selfishness, though, and she breaks in now with only a passing observation on the stillness of this other. Slowly the small dark pegasus moves forward, wilted flowers spilling from her mane and rushing off toward whatever awaits them inland. "I have a question, if you'd be so kind." She pauses then, head cocked, expression innocent and empty and a little too young for one already four years old. She speaks no further, though. She is content to wait, and watch, and think.

Azalea