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06-11-2013, 11:00 PM
| Skysong |
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The day was like ice after I stopped moving, and I bleakly imagined it to match my heart, all frozen stone and wanton abandonment. I admit, it was one of my more dramatic notions, for as I young filly I had a penchant for such theatrics. Still, it was more for show than anything. Though I did have a bit of guilt for leaving Mother the way I did, a much larger part of my soul longed for the freedom that this argument had given me. I had no intentions of looking back. I had left, and I was going to make my way in the world through hell or high water. I was young. I was pretty. I was strong. I was smart. At least, that's what I kept telling myself. The forest was dark, and perhaps that was why the cold voice emanating from behind me startled me so; I whirled a tad too quickly and stumbled backward, but my naiveté led to curiosity rather than fear. My auds quirked forward rather than back, and instead of scurrying from the strange mare, I stood my ground as she approached. Perhaps even then there was a certain clairvoyance in me, though I would not call it magic - I felt that she would not hurt me, though it was well within her power to do so, though I could not tell you how I knew this to be true. Instead, I watched in silence as the fae slipped closer, her movements oddly smooth. She was covered from head to hoof in scars, and her mane and tail hung in tangles. This was not a mare to be trifled with, nor was she one that seemed entirely sound of mind. I have to admit, the notion interested me far more than it should have. The light-hued femme moved closer still and, after a sniff to my shoulder, away again. She smelled of death, I remember that now. I had not smelled such a stench before, not in my sheltered life, but it was there all the same. "Stop with the theatrics," she ordered, and I did, not because she had told me to, but because I no longer felt the urge to cry. I was not a baby any longer, after all, and I immediately regretted that the mare had found me in that condition. I should have been standing tall, carelessly inspecting my surroundings. I should have heard her coming, or something. In my mind, I was beginning to make a list of things I had done wrong, mistakes that I would not repeat a second time. If nothing else, I was intelligent, and I learned from my own stupidity when given half a chance. When she told me that I was lucky, I was tempted for half a second to answer with a snarky remark, but her addendum silenced me. Instead of cowering, however, I merely tilted my head to one side. I attribute this to two things, the first being the sense that she would not harm me,and the second being the youthful bliss in which I was still cocooned. There was no such thing as murder in my world as yet; that only happened in Mother's stories, the ones she had told me to scare me into staying with her for all my days. I had not believed her, and at that point in my life, I still had no reason to change my mind. "Stop being so emotional," I was told, and though my eyes had dried already, I lifted my head a bit higher, puffed my chest out a little further. There was something about her that made me want to impress her, and so I tried with all my heart to do so. And then she asked about home. "It's very hot," I blurted, almost without thinking. I hadn't wanted to keep her waiting, after all. "A lot of the newcomers think that we wouldn't be able to survive there, but they're wrong. There's a big oasis deep in the desert, and that's where we stay 'most all the time. There's quite a bit of green around the water - grass and trees and the like - so it's not so bad there, even in Tallsun. There's the ocean on one side, if you walk far enough, and they're building a wall on the other, along the border. Mo-" I stop, not wanting to call her Mother like a big baby. "The Forgers are working on it, ma'am, night and day, but it's not anywhere near done, not yet, anyway." I hesitate, and then: "May I ask why you want to know, ma'am?" "Talk talk talk." |
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