I have wandered away from momma’s side, perhaps not ultimately smart on my behalf, but I find that the allure of things I have not seen is greater than my desire for comfort nestled against her. Either way, she’s only eating food, our lessons for the day closed as she has shown me the waters and from where they come and why there are here and I am quickly grasping what paths lead us home and which will lead us astray, though there are many I do not know to where they go for she has not told me and I am not allowed to go so far away on my own.

Even now, she can see me if she really wants to. The last time I wandered out of her range of sight she knocked me against the head so hard with her long, powerful horn that I will not be attempting such things again anytime soon, but she’s so busy shoving clover down her mouth that I doubt she’s looked up in the past ten minutes to glance at me.

(He’s quite wrong, let me assure you.)

I’m busy watching the silver streaks of the fish slide through the water, giggling now and again when one of my hooves splashes into the liquid and sends them darting madly in a thousand directions to avoid it. It probably seems like a simple game to someone as profound as you, but to me, it’s quite fun; that I never manage to hit the fish no matter how quickly I try to jab at them and that they boundlessly return no matter how often I kick at them are adding up to a good time, not to mention that the water is cool and feels nice in the midst of all this sun beating down on my black body.

I lift my head to look over at momma, wondering how she can stand wearing all that damn metal all the time. If I was her I’d be nothing but a river, considering the amount of sweat I already have all built up in the folds of my legs and the crooks of my cheeks, but I suppose its one of the many things that make her as powerful as she is.

Father doesn’t seem so regal as momma, even on his best days. He’s more of the dark swell of storm clouds to her flashing lightning, droll and simple. His strength is less loud than momma’s. I’m not sure what that means other than that adults make about as much sense as the rest of this world I’ve been born into – not much at all.

It’s almost like I hear something whimpering off to the near distance, my bright little gaze switching over towards the source of the sound with wonder etched into each feature of my face, but I see nothing but the swaying grass and the purple flowers that momma calls Thistles and which are quite obviously then what this place is named for. Either way, it’s across the little arm of the creek I’ve been splashing in, and momma won’t like if I cross it without her and surely won’t be able to see me on the other side.

I look back over at her. She’s looking out towards the sound, too, and walking closer.

I look back out towards the sound, finding only the chirrup of sparrows and the creaking song of the grass hoppers. Momma is there alongside me, her face all business as she looks out across the water and I look up at her assuming she’ll hear nothing as I hear nothing.

But then the sound comes again, and it’s a voice. It’s definitely a voice. This time we’re both looking into the sea of spiked flowers and grass and momma is stepping into the water, her wise eyes looking at me from over her gold dappled shoulder. The sun catches on the marking under my right eye (I know it’s there because I’ve seen myself in the ice caverns to the west of my birthplace) and I’m partially blinded and squinting at her as she talks to me.

"Stay close," is all she says, as if she had to. Tucking my ears down on top of my head like I’ve seen other tough men do when presented with trouble I bouncily follow after her, reveling in the sound of all my hooves splashing through the creek and my golden gaze nervously watching ahead through partly closed lids; it’s only a veneer of toughness, inside I’m full of crazy ideas about it being a maimed body in the process of being savaged by hundreds of monsters or that it’s a deranged mad man exploding little boys with his mind.

I know it’s not these things. Momma wouldn’t let me come if she thought that was so – but I’ve experienced so little and this is the most emotionally charged moment of my tiny life since I was dropped out onto the stone and all those people had come to stare at me.

We walk for a while, further than I’m sure the voice had come from, when I see something moving to the side of my vision and I nicker softly to momma as I skirt off towards the small white blur in the middle of all that green.

What I find there is not a monster, or a body, or a crazed magician…

But a little girl.

"Momma!" I shout back to the woman no more than a couple of feet behind me, fear for the really ratty looking kid in the grass bright on my face and my mind too innocent to notice the buds of wings growing along her sides as anything more than an odd coincidence to match her partially bald and really… dusty appearance.

Momma is there before the last syllable of my shout dies in the air, nudging the little shoulder in the grass for a few seconds before she raises her proud crown with a shudder into the air and looks about her, nostrils broad and deeply breathing. I mimic the motion, wondering why in Time’s name it is she is hyperventilating at a time like this and deciding it is surely some logical thing instead; I smell nothing but me and momma and little golden snow in the grass, a few other scents faint and faded and not present as we were.

Interesting.

"She’s been alone for some time," is all momma says, and I guess that makes sense considering I don’t see anyone but us out here and momma seems to know just about everything worth knowing. Still, there is something in her voice and in the way she had recoiled when she’d touched the puffy thing on the girl’s side that settled within me the notion that she didn’t particularly care to help the weird orphan of the meadow. I shake my head hard, right to the left, the way I’d seen adults do when they meant to say no, when they disliked the idea of something.

"We help?" I ask, desperation clinging to my voice because I have some reason burning in my belly that we have to save her, even if momma doesn’t think she’s worth our time. It seems like she wants to tell me no as she stands there looking at me with a really odd expression, almost like she wants to kill me or the ivory orphan but also that she wants to cry or cannot bear to look on me for a moment longer. I am not sure.

I have said it before and I will say it many times. Adults make no sense.

After what feels like forever (really only about a minute) she sighs and the sharpness of her features fades, her eyes shorn from my face and returned to the fallen figure in the grass. "I suppose. Help me get her up."

I smile.

It seems I always get my way with momma.