She didn't believe in luck, or fortune, or kismet, or, y'know, whatever else you wanted to dub that voodoo stuff. Her feet were planted firmly in foundations of logic -- in what she could smash to smithereens and blast to bits. Or electrify. It all depends on how angry she was {and how much her victim offender deserved to be electrocuted.} Anything else, well, let's be honest here: that was something for her mother to muse over with the ghosts she summoned from time to time. Zenobia didn't understand the Sultana's peculiar ability, or necessarily why she would want it -- but she didn't idolize her mother any less for her eccentricities.

Yet that chaotic storm of thought is quite beside the tip of the iceberg; as she flies, her wings pushing and pummelling the air rather haphazardly, she cannot help but wonder how the fuck -- by the Sun God, she feels bad. I'm not supposed to swear, the daughter of the Throat's once-rulers thinks; she knows such behaviour is vulgar. As far as she knows, even Gaucho doesn't drop f-bombs; at least, he didn't in front of her. It was probably part of some warrior code of chivalry.

Then again, she didn't want to be some valiant knight prancing off to battle with his puffed-up chest.

Even though she was small, she just wanted to the big-ass, mob-queen bitch. Nobody messed with electric monsters who could zap anyone, at, like, any time, and they definitely wouldn't want to mess with HER! They would be all, like, "that's Zenobia!" She didn't want to be feared, exactly... just, she wanted to be a hero. With her sparkly blue eyes and zappy wings, she would scare all the bad guys away. And even better than that? Her parents would be proud of her.

It wasn't as if they disapproved of her. Sohalia seemed proud of her more often than not... and as for dad... well... he was kind of an absentee father. It was simply that the hoofprints they left behind were big.

Wings cup and cradle the warm air as she descends, voltaic eyes glistening -- she doesn't remember it, not like this. Barren sands, red and hot, the jaded tree in the distance, the faint scent of charred brush -- it's familiar, in the same way she could pick out the curling crescents of Gaucho's antlers or the swooping angles of Sohalia's wings in a crowd. And yet, the prospect of landing seems enormously difficult {more so than for the usual reasons.} The thoughts sit quiet in her skull, pushing against the seams, and yet she can't quite hear them at all, any more than she can pinpoint the reason it seems so bizarre; and it isn't until she touches down and feels the familiar, faint tickling of her magic flaring up that she realizes why: she's alone.

There's no mother, no father, no chaperone -- just her in this vast wilderness stinking of the sun and reeking of unfamiliar bodies.

And so she finishes her original question.
How the fuck did the Throat just change shape like a tubby pony losing weight?

She knew her mother -- the dove gray of her coat, the softness of her silken muzzle, the tangible quiet in her voice, and the comfort that she found beneath those wide, endless white wings that so endearingly cradled her. Those were the tarnished memories of a time of dependence and the need for the taste of milk on her tongue: and so she tried her hardest to accordingly squash the longing for the warmth of a creamy flank and the lilting murmur of the crafter's stories. Feelings, longings, for a mum's love and that pretentious sense of ease -- those were not the staples of a heroine! Relief found by familiarity was for momma's boys bores, horses afraid of the exotic flavours of adventures! Zenobia was to be the outrageously fantastic and kickass crimestopper who battled legions of henchmen before breakfast; the war goddess who reaped the lives of the unjust, who delivered revenge for the wronged and sickly! {Or something like that. Her job descriptions were a work in progress.}

But here she was looking for her parents anyways.

It was odd, she could not help but admit it -- when the nightmares came to life in Helovia, she really, honestly, did not care much that her parents weren't protecting her. Well, maybe her dad, just a little. [He was supposed to be a hunk of butch and brute strength who did the whole attractive one-liner thing. But he's dad, so any thoughts about possible hotness/handsomeness was off-limits.] During the catastrophe, she was so consumed with battling off wimpy feelings such as fear that she neglected to feel abandoned. Or lost. Or, really, anything. Mostly she lurked around in the corners and occasionally jumped out, her wings doing a frantic dance, scaring off passer-bys.

No, it was definitely after, when they all trickled out of the caves and she remained lost inside, that she grew afraid.

Terrified.
And she hated it, above all else. The quick ticking of her heart, the thud of blood in her ears, the nervous bursts of static electricity along her wings, the dryness of her mouth. She was supposed to be courageous, indomitable as her father was: but she high-tailed it out of the dark world below Helovia as soon as she found the way out. Coward, coward, coward. Down, she orders -- back down, puny little thoughts of nefarious monstrosities; she was going to be a hero, a vanquisher, a soldier in the making: she was going to be a WAR MISTRESS, capable and cool and ------------------

Thoughts fall away because mother, oh mother.

Mother; sweeping grace and silken hairs, pale against raw sands, and the daughter of a warlord and goddess bursts forward to meet her in a clumsy whirlwind of graceless white and black. Eyes shine, voltaic, running upwards to glitter joyously -- meeting bi-colored orbs of seafoam and sky. Careless, brash, the see-saw of her neck a chaotic thing as she rises up to reach the outstretched muzzle, bumping her forehead against the softness of her mother -- oh mother how I've missed you so.

"Mumsy" is Zenobia's exhale, prayer, sweet and fond and bold on her charcoal lips, before she remembers her newfound maturity. "Sohalia!"