This time she had asked for permission before leaving her parents to go exploring. Erthë never wanted to live through another scolding like the one she had received after coming home, battered and bruised and so weak she hadn't been able to do anything but eat and sleep for several long days. Their words still stung her even though they had been both correct and fair, and so it was a rather muted girl that crossed the vast windswept Steppe, made her way across the land bridge between the raging west sea and the ocean-like lake on the east side and began the climb up towards the plateau where she had been born. On her heels - or round and round her in vast, gleeful circles - ran her father's three-headed companion, the safeguard and sole reason why she had been allowed to go at all. Erthë loved Vlasi as much as she loved the rest of the family and it wasn't like she really minded the presence of the shape-shifter. But it was frustrating to have company when she would have preferred to be on her own, and so she spoke little to the creature and tried her best to pretend she wasn't there at all.

As she made her way south it became increasingly clear that spring had arrived. The sun glowed warmer here than up in the north and snow was melting into rapids, streams, torrents and veritable rivers. It wasn't really the best or safest time to go up into the mountains, but the filly wanted to see the meadow she only remembered in her dreams now, look at the white tree Mother said she had been born beneath and see if it really was as pretty as she had made it sound. Time was passing so quickly, and there were things here she neither should nor wanted to forget.

It was midday by the time she finally reached the elevated plateau. Panting and coughing and grimacing as the sore, swollen pustules that had appeared on her inner thighs rubbed against one another she looked out across the meadow, expecting to be awed...

... but somehow the sight of muddy fields and brown grass couldn't quite lift her spirits.

"Is this really it?" she asked Vlasi, a note of doubt in her voice. But the Rou only panted and blinked at her with one head while a big paw scratched another behind its ears, and the girl sighed. So much for the glorious fields of snow. Not only was it gone, it had been replaced by ugly, barren, stinking puddles of mud and muck without a single trace of charm.

She was disappointed, and made a big deal out of pouting as she tripped further out onto the mountain meadow.