Själ

The water was cold.

This was not, altogether, a surprise: the princess had known that the chill in the air would extend also to the choppy waters of the pond, but she had not anticipated the suddenness with which the water's frigidity would pierce her hide and invade her muscles. Her entrance into the fray was accompanied by a shriek and a shudder. Within moments, she was soaked and cold to the bone.

Still, she did not waver, splashing up to her chest on the outskirts of the group, blocked by the many bodies vying for position to get to the egg. The girl could not quite slip through any of the cracks, could not find a way through the cacophonous swirl of others. She leaped, as best she could through water with her quickly freezing muscles, from side to side, lunging for the next biggest opening with each sudden plunge.

She had never entered a pond in quite this way before, warned of the danger of wetting oneself in the dead of Frostfall. It occurred to her suddenly that this had not been the brightest of ideas, that even if she emerged with the egg, it may not matter if she froze to death. But she couldn't give up now, couldn't let the poor thing spend its life alone. Maybe if she could get to it, could get it out of the water - maybe one of these others would take it, if she were to perish in its defense.

The egg rose into the air, and the princess screamed; for a moment, she thought that someone had jostled the ice just so to throw the egg into the air. But it did not come down, floating higher in a particularly eerie way as it passed over the heads of those who had so fervently sought it, lowering itself before Själ's nose and continuing on to the shoreline. Awestruck, the filly followed.

There was something in the back of her mind, something that poked and prodded and wiggled; but every time she tried to catch it, it flitted away. It wasn't a thought, really, nor an emotion; it was something new, something foreign, something yet to be developed. Though she didn't know what it was, she did know that it tied her to the egg somehow, and she lay down in the dirt at the water's edge, curling herself protectively around it, shivering. She would find a way to move it in a moment - but for now, she needed to protect it from any who dared come near.

Talk.

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