Яikyn

The shadow of this forest has such depth at night that it almost seems alive.
 
The bruises given to me by the Haruspex have faded into almost nothing, the ridge along my stifle simply a rough line in my coat, the bruised hip no longer aching with my step; though I still wear the marks of electrical burns, the wounds healed in places in a rich, creamy coffee color blending into the deep burgundy of the scabs, the worst of my wounds is still the lacing of contusions and small scabs from where I’d been flung to the ground by a shadow wolf. 
 
My ribs hurt, too, along with other places I’d suffered damage while battling alongside my sire (if you wondered), but I use a method taught to me by Furen, one that I have seen other warriors use.  It’s called walking it off.
 
I’ve left the bamboo maze, mostly because it has lost all charm it may have ever had to me in the memory of those golden eyed wolves, but also because I didn’t fancy getting lost this close to dark.  Instead, I’d traveled west and then south, down trails I’d walked more than once with my dam or my friends (sometimes both), and deeper still into the heart of this ancient and morose wood.
 
I want to see the red waters of the pool, to stand beneath the massive tree that I remember being the greatest ever grown.  I am sure it is only as large or perhaps smaller than those which towered in the Nightwalk, but I want to see it none the less – I remember it holding a somber air to it, one that stated it had watched the creation of everything around it, that it had proudly watched the fall of many kingdoms and great kings.
 
I could respect such a tree, and I feel that sensation rise through me as I break through the low brush (this forest fills broken game trails so fast it is surely imbued with the power of the Earth God himself) and find my golden eyes lingering on its deep, deep green needles which tower upwards in a conical shape into the heavens. 
 
And there is something golden and glinting in its branches, catching the light of the moon which is full and glows silver across the realm, igniting the fire of the diamonds that glint madly in the night.
 
With a greedy eagerness I stretch my legs towards it, gilded eyes never once leaving the shining trinket which I now can tell is oval in shape and made of a very pale gold, my eyes well adjusted to the depths of post midnight darkness, even in a wood such as this.  It is some fifteen feet above the ground, dangling seductively from a thick, matching chain of white gold which holds the pendant on the branch.
 
I can’t reach it, and for the millionth time since she’d vanished with my mother, I wish Kyst was here, or that I had a griffon of my own.  Instead, I’m left here (now splashing about in the pool below trying to get a better angle on the thing) on the ground with only my logic and four hooves, pondering precisely how to levitate myself upwards.
 
And then I see the sleeping squirrel, a memory of my magic rising clear in me.  I believed it was there, even though I hadn’t ever successfully managed to make it do much of anything; too many weird occurrences happened around me, and there was no reason I’d be so weary after feeling that… tug on my consciousness if the tug wasn’t doing something physical, right?
 
And so I push out with my will again towards the squirrel, I bid it to wake up and to wander over to the necklace and shove it off the branch.
 
I feel a tiny heartbeat flicker seemingly a hundred times faster than my own within my head, I feel small fingers touching the rough, sticky bark of the pine and scurrying across a bobbing surface towards a shining something; those same paws touch cold and smooth and then push it outwards.
 
The plink of the object landing in the pool pulls my will from the squirrel, leaving my head hanging low and my eyes dim as I slowly turn my features to look in the water from where the sound had come.
 
The squirrel above chirrups in terror and bounds through the trees away from me, screaming shrilly, unsure why he is some four foot from where he’d gone to bed and not at all pleased.
 
Sluggishly, I bid my legs to wade through the hock deep water towards the shallower region of the pool, smiling the most pleased of expressions to find the oval object shining on the ruby lined bed.  I hold my breath and quickly remove it from the two foot water, crossing the rest of the distance to the shore to admire my new… thing.

 [ OOC: Open for anyone. :3 ] 

in every heart a hole