The world changes. With only a few months of knowing behind you, it feels like apocalypse: like the unveiling of a lie. Things you once deemed true and right — the heat of day, the simplicity of travel, the motion of water — now shiver uncertainly in your head. You haven't been up long, but already you wander from the protection of your family, questions drawing you farther and farther afield. What lies in the shadows of the trees? Why do the leaves crack like that? What's this — glittering — on the ground? You forget, actually, just how far you go. You travel with head down, one dark eye and then the other cocked toward the light glimmer of frost on leaf and bough.

It's a beautiful morning, at least. There's something warm about even the ineffectual sunlight, something frail and fleeting about the way the birds sing — almost as if for the last time. You remember all of nothing about Frostfall — only what comes after. Only the verdance and the wildness of spring. So this is a new thing you wander through, your mind spinning questions and no one present to ask. You begin to think you'll have to wander back to Mesec and ask him when a noise cracks through the otherwise tranquil morning, and you know by now it's the noise of someone large passing over dead leaves, someone hooved. Probably someone like you.

In a manner of speaking.

No one's really like you aside from your family, and even then certain differences set you apart. Maybe this morning the knowledge stings a little less than usual, but ever it exists, like a wedge between yourself and the rest of the world. Your tiny ears come forward with interest (not fear, anymore) and dully you wonder who it is this time. Someone helpful? Someone good? At least not someone your age, you think, someone self-obsessed and bratty and of no interest whatsoever. Briefly you remember the girls from your first trip to the Thistle Meadow and your expression closes down (Stupid).

Because you're never content to wait, because you take action regardless of consequence, you pick up wandering again and move toward the sound, though you yourself are soundless save the natural noise of your movement. It isn't long before you see her wending in between the trees: a color like champagne (if you knew what champagne was) and also brilliant blue, just a little, splashed over her tail like an accident, like spilled paint. Your neck cranes and tilts at the same time a weird noise leaves your throat, part greeting and part attempt at getting attention. Your voice isn't used to being loud yet, so it comes out sort of hoarse, sort of uncertain. "H'lo!" Then suddenly you freeze.

What next?

You wanted to ask something, but now you wonder if it's a bad idea. You don't know her, actually, even if there is a horn spiking her brow. Maybe she isn't from the Basin? You don't recognize her, actually. And you don't recognize the — thing — flitting in her vicinity. The thing looks like a nightmare, only you aren't yet familiar enough with nightmares to fear it the way you should. Your eyes lock on the whiteness of the face, the blackness of the eyes (your eyes are black, too, aren't they?) and you shuffle a step back. Something in your body language reads sorry, but only quietly. Wings quiver and tuck more tightly to your sides, and you don't know what to do, so you talk again, reckless and, on the surface, amazingly self assured. "What's that?"