we heal with love,

To practice her flying, Alysanne always left the Edge. She wasn’t willing to tell anyone else except for Lyanna about this little secret activity of hers, not yet. It would be a surprise for her sister and, frankly, no one else there really needed to know. Not until she actually managed to land and take off without much trouble, until it looked like she had been flying all her life and not stubbornly rooting herself to the earth and refusing to leave it.

She didn’t want to tell anyone else because she did not want to have to explain why she rooted herself, why she ignored the wings she had been given. She wasn’t afraid of heights, wasn’t even afraid of falling from them. She didn’t even know the full reason why. She had pieces here and there - she simply liked being close to the earth, where the nutrients from her hooves could be of use to the earth there, the earth she had grown to love from her father.

And here on the ground, with her wings folded, she would show no one the scars and reminders of a battle she lost long ago with a demon - scars as old as the ones on her sister Iona’s flesh. The pink, mangled flesh of her wing joint wasn’t something she cared to show off. It had been healed but the feathers and hair there had never quite grown in again, leaving it bare.

Ever since the memories had come back to her, they haunted her.

She had snuck out this morning (‘snuck’ as though she didn’t have every right to come and go from the Edge as she pleased) early, before the sun rose and made her way down to the beach. By the time she arrived, the first pink and gold rays were just starting to peek over the eastern horizon, over Helovia.

Hemlock left her to hunt the mosquitos and bounty of water insects in the area but stayed close, looping around the waves and sand alike as he sought the tiny prey.

Instead of picking up her practicing right away, Alysanne waded into the sea until the gentle waves lapped around her knees - facing away from the rising sun and watching instead the receding night on the western horizon. She had never felt a particular pull to the sea, always her heart rested in the forests and meadows of the earth, but today the clear sky and calm ocean was soothing to her and she welcomed it, the light of the rising sun just starting to touch her and the waves around her.

alysanne