We had rarely come here when I was small; the walk was long and the trail steep, and it passed too close to the Hidden Falls (occasionally called some other name by the older folks, something that makes me think of rolling fields rather than the sweeping, graceful hills and waters of the current land) for her wicked heart to bear.  I have no such worries as she did and freely traverse the wild trails that lead me up around the stony sides of the jutting peak.
 
I do remember it being beautiful, and I find it so now as I walk through the knee high grasses with my lion’s tail trailing behind me leisurely, enjoying the silence of the meadow and the low chirrup of the morning birds, stirring just before the first light of dawn breaks upon the horizon.
 
The effect, up here, where the clouds lay low in slumber and wreath the plateau, the spring grasses rising from the golden remnants of last years fields laden with flowers of every shade and color, it a resplendent rosy, gold light which filters across the entire field, highlighting my dark figure with shining, liquid dawn as I cross the dew laden pastures of this dreamy place.
 
Slick and damp, spring having stolen my winter’s coat with a tenacity, my patchy coat is part velvet and part warming down, doused in the collected water on the tall grass.  Chilly, the morning breeze makes me unconsciously shiver, my mind too lost in the wonder of the delightful sunrise that plays out on the eastern brim of the world. 
 
The bruises that lace my body, that ache when I first stir after a long rest or during moments of extreme cold, tremulously moan, but I force their complaints away with more vigorous moments, stretching the soreness until the soreness eases into numb nothing; long and graceful, with a power and speed that I had come to be quite proud of, my legs ease my dark frame through the flower scented fields at a swift canter, the swift motions of my limbs ceasing only as I approach the brim of the world.
 
Sinking my legs down, I test fate and my strength as my hooves bite into the loamy earth, grass slapping against my belly and body in sharp strikes.  With a delighted laughter that echoes about me I come to a halt inches from the edge, several chunks of loosened earth tumbling downwards, their fall dizzying – but I don’t look down, instead rising to my full height to look out over the North and the sea.
 
Today was a day of freedom, one in which I was determined to find delight, mostly because I could feel the threatening presence of melancholy along the outskirts of my good humor, and I had just been a pivotal part in the destruction of a God.  To be moping about some girl in some forest far, far away or a sister who was mad at me for nothing I could change would do me no good, and it would be even worse to think of the dam who had vanished like so much smoke into a stiff wind.
 
And so I look upon the scope of the earth, all that the Gods of Helovia crafted with the power and strength given to them by the First Gods, and the imbalance born from the treachery of their creations.  I look out and drink in every ounce of the serenity in the quiet morning, letting the cool wind touch my face with the scents that drift in from the steadily swaying sea and the snowy, mountainous lands along its far shore.


[ Open for anyone. :D ]