Maybe you're getting closer. You tread now through a forest, your tiny hooves displacing the dead matter underfoot with every step. A trail of whispers follows in your wake, leaves complaining of your passage in their small, dry voices. Here in the shadows, the sound magnifies and moves like shivers down your sides. You sort of miss Vesper. Sort of miss Mama. Every now and then a sneaky thought creeps in and whispers something like go get them, but they're far now and anyway, you'd much rather find what you want then present it to them like the valiant young adventurer you are, bold and clever and so worthy.

But as of now, you don't feel particularly worthy of anything. You feel like a weary, skittish colt lost somewhere between purpose and whimsy. Wings hang loosely from your sides, too weary even to keep up their constant flapping. All around you, the forest sings. It's a new song, unfamiliar and beautiful, maybe, if you weren't young and easily bothered and so tired of being wet. Whoever authorized this random assault of water from the air has your eternal hatred. Every now and then a cold, cold droplet even has the audacity to fall right into your ear and then a bout of violent head shaking ensues, as you crow hop about silently condemning the weather gods all to untimely deaths. When you're done, you blink skyward for a long moment or two, but no one answers your plaintive staring. No one offers you an umbrella, either.

You trudge on.

Your mind busies itself with musing on the probable habits of whales and the potential course of action you should take if you do find one (an egg? hadn't the girl at the hot springs found an egg?). You don't decide on much before a different sort of music penetrates your mind, wending through the droplets almost seamlessly. And it's a pretty melody, and odd melody, one which sends out fingers of feeling across your skin. Hesitating, you look up, dark eyes searching the shadows for some sign of the music's source. It's definitely a voice, right? Not just another random fluke of the weather? The course of your travel alters the harder you listen, until you drift toward it with some certainty, strung along the way fairy tale children are strung along by the pied piper, only you are far from anything born in a fairy tale, and the tune you follow makes no promises of untimely death.

It's a mare, actually.

You glimpse her between the trees in bits and pieces until you get closer: pale skin and blue edging, a horn jutting from her brow like everyone else back home. Of course, you're not home, and the fact weighs on you a little more each day, but you're far too stubborn to go running back to Mama having failed. What's maybe fortunate, of course, is you're not too stubborn to trail along behind the humming mare like a lost duckling, your head tilted in an image of curiosity, your steps slow and more than a little wary.

VIRGA