Her journeys had taken a turn for the..weird…as her night/or morning (she doesn’t really know because she’s been underground forever). She hasn’t wandered up to the main room where light can been seen, where you can smell the ash and snow swirling outside the gaping entrance. Bodies still keep piling, Tangere cannot bear to hang out in that room any longer. The endless halls weave and wind her all through random parts of the caves – she encounters many creatures, others like her and some that are certainly not. She interacts little, so little that it is not very memorable or worth recording; she travels at a jog with her stride reaching for every step, head low, nostrils all the while tediously collecting. She doesn’t know exactly where she’s headed and really, she has no concern for the information, she’s just…going.
Drips, echoes and clacking feet bounce against the moist stone walls; they radiate warmth that you can feel on your skin as if an open hand is touching you. Even the water that pools at the feet of the falls is warm, like a bath to wash away the bits of the burnt world that had stuck in her fur before it hit the tumbling waters. She is pristine now, or as pristine as her fuzz allows. Her winter coat is confused and has half shed away…the snows have barely just begun, but the caves remain temperate. Now she is trapped. On most days the outside world would be far too cold for her to survive in for more than a day (with no food, and suspicious water).
Accept it.
Scratching and rustling and odd bird sounds draw her around a jagged corner off of the illuminated halls of the “Glowing Room”, as its come to be known. She moves off of the Room (though still part of it, obviously), dipping into a slightly hidden little cavern, somewhat elevated.. She hops gracefully up what appear to be stair like stones, like a giant graceful one-horned mountain goat really; from one point to another and then up onto the slanted platform. The rock is slippery, but manageable to her rather precise footwork. When she looks up she sees sun, and somehow it’s warmer than the cavern walls… it shines through a circular hole with bushes and branches hung over it. Snowflakes swiftly fly down, but never make it to the floor alive, melting from the lava heat traveling in the veins of the rocks. Large birds swoop and call to one another…they appear to be some sort of raven.. Tangere had never seen them outside of her old home. Something inside of her stirs and she lets a whicker boom softly from her nostrils, calling to them with no reason to do so. At first they ignore her, frantically flying in and out of their warm burrowed holes.
They’re fretting.
She watches them, some fly in, some fly out; they carry small weaved ‘baskets’ or pouches filled with berries and whatever else a bird in Helovia might need. But why? She muses to herself. They’re fleeing. Her thoughts chime once more with a soft voice in the back of her mind… She does not get to elaborate any further, she’s soon interrupted by was appears to be one of the biggest ravens she’s ever seen, and oddly, the mostly black bird has a silver ring across his neck (of color, not a real metal ring) and fiery orange eyes. She seems to fall weightlessly toward the mare, expanding her craning wings as soon as she is within a foot or so. She hovers and swerves above the mares face, and then her horn, making weird bird sounds the entire time. Each time the silver unicorn extends her muzzle in greeting or her horn in defense the bird erupts with flaring wings and a screeching caw. Tangere is utterly confused, suppressed panic makes her dance… tapping her feet against the rock, seemingly jogging in place while she stares at the odd raven. Tang has no time to react when the creature breaks her pattern and lunges for her neck; suppressed panic very quickly morphs into real, actual shit-your-pants panic. And poor Tangere, all she can manage to do is dance harder...but her panic dance does nothing for her and the spider-toes and sharp talons manage to dig into the mare’s mane. The silver mare drops her shoulder and attempts to spin, the bird yelling at her and only thickening her alarm. The bird screams in her face for a last time and she becomes like an obedient pet, seriously intimidated by the burning stare of this strange bird that is now clinging to her mane. She breathes heavily, the white brims of her eyes flashing as she tries to look at the bird that is now fidgeting, out of sight and still attached. Tangere’s feet are still though, tail flicking and sides heaving, her skin dripping sweat onto the glistening stone floor. Very unceremoniously the bird flies off, up and away, into one of the many holes littering the weird well like vertical tunnel. Just as quickly it returns with a pouch grasped in its bony fingers, strands of feather and hair bulging from a swaddled something, Tang’s first guess is a rock, but she is very wrong. The bird attempts to hover, flashing a white, silver speckled egg snugged inside bit of nesting materials. Flapping and swooping still, the bird maneuvers back to the spot just ahead of her withers where it had woven a pocket for the egg within the strands of grey and white hair that make up her mane. Rather quietly the bird secures the egg inside the makeshift sack made of hair, stuffing down feathers and old flowers to keep it still and warm.
And it leaves. No words, no direction, nothing. It moves away from the panting, wide-eyed mare and disappears.
Tangere pokes the thing as best she can; it requires her to bend her neck quite a bit to reach it with her muzzle. She sniffs it – it smells foreign, but the flavors of smell conjure memories of home and familiarity. She clamors down, sliding on loose, slippery rocks until she lands firmly on the floor. She sniffs at it again before moving off toward the Glowing Room. She’s many things right now.
1. Confused.
2. Confused.
3. Starving.
4. Confused.
5. …pretty damn hungry.
Ok. So she’s two things repeated over and over many times.
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