| Aurora Basin Mare |
| Mare :: Unicorn :: 17.1 :: 3 |
| tay |
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Valka
She entered the darkness, taken willingly into the moonless mouth. There was nothing anymore, the snow reduced to puddles of white syrup swallowing hooves with each hesitant step. The trees were pointed teeth bending wary overhead as she walked along the tongue of spring. She was but a word in the night, perhaps stolen or lapsed. Heading north again, stale as bread in the night's jaws. Valka was but a yawn, lingering on the edge of familiar voices. Just outside the place that imitated home, and sang her name with the rock-cut wind. Valka's heart was a warm darkened coal. It would break into flame if someone stepped out from the shadows. Anyone. 'Perhaps Snö,' the mare yearned quietly, tangled thoughts prowling the pure blue of the child's wintry eyes in the aching memory. Remembering the tender promise they clutched.
Valka emerged like a midnight flower from the sleet; photosynthesizing the dark vastness of the snow capped kingdom. Even in the blackest reaches of night, the climbing peaks were visible against the star-flecked sky, cradling her spot in the aspen with paternal arms. Stunned by the stalwart beauty, her offset horn tipped more to the side, odd eyes mesmerized by arching earth, the wind's sharp voice, the frozen warmth. A shiver rattled through slender legs scaling the curve of her neck, setting chill deep into her bones. Valka breathed the world into warm lungs. Felt the cold creep past them, ever anxious to touch the open heart that fluttered between two measures of longing. She could inhale forever without staggering at the bulge of a bloated chest. It didn't matter how much air she forced down into those lungs, because it was impossible to fill this kind of emptiness. It might have been possible for the two ballooning sacks to touch each other, as her heart filled hardly any space at all. Every breath was like this. The same air came in and out, frozen as the memory of a friend. All the same sharp pang of frost until each breath birthed a sigh. Air echoed against air. Against the silence.
It could have been months or minutes of existing between the inaudible battle of earth and atmosphere. The lights flamed green above and danced on the snow so lightly that not a single print was left behind. Valka's eyes were not trained for this kind of beauty. She thought of crystalline air when she first saw the sky on fire, of course tried to breathe it in, taste any scent of this strange smoke. But she only felt the cold abandonment of plain air. Valka felt pain instead of sweetness. A lash of cold through the blind expectation of warm wind. It was the mnemonic key to her memories, and they came as rapidly as the sun did through the violent sky. Her mother's wild voice poured over her like stagnant water, her father's absence felt cold as the space between her lungs. Valka shifted her slender legs, exhaled the white froth of northern spring out onto the fading dark of sunrise. She felt odd. Dizzy even.
The dark child felt the heat of something stirring in her eyes, boiling over onto hollow cheeks. Tears? She tucked her tail and snorted, suddenly surprised by how loud it was, surprised by how bright morning was. How could she cry? How could the most beautiful thing feel the ugliest pain? Valka's melting gaze grappled faint shadows as they leaned away from her, once again resembling the all-too-familiar pattern of her fleeting father. The cold breath became choking sobs, the kind that nobody should see. Her skin boiled at the sun's abusive touch. She bolted, wheeling back on her tail, turning to the blue side of the horizon, galloping fast enough to chase it. Valka was angry enough to break open—rage into wildfire.
But it was too cold to flame.
YOU'RE A WOLF. |
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credit
L e e k a
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This was the farthest north she had ever been. Amazing how in just a few days travel one could find themselves into a land of perpetual winter, a land slaved in ice and snow even in the summer months. It was not all that brutal now, however, considering it was deep within the spring so the air was quite mild, for the north at least, and not wholly unbearable for southerner like her. Of course, that begs the question doesn't it? Why was she here?
One: because she could.
Two: She wanted to see the Aurora.
And Three: just to be anywhere outside the Worlds Edge.
Boredom had ravaged the poor mares brain for too long and now she had started a bullheaded campaign against it, giving in to impulses she had largely ignored and dismissed as recklessness. Leeka would be lying if she said she had finally settled in, gotten used to Helovia in the meager year she had inhabited it. There was still so much she found strange, unnerving even. Horses with wings, horses with horns, omniscient Gods, magic a fluent commodity yet rare. A variable melting pot of all equines from estranged lands far and near beside the original natives. It was so different from all she used to know, but at least she was trying to embrace it. And this latest adaptation was the concept of free range. The fact that herd members could travel beyond the main herd body was...well, a deviant thought. One that brought into question safety and a defiance of the natural order. A lone horse was an easy target and almost always begets harm, but Helovians exercised this practice daily. It wasn't even an offense...which was wholly mind boggling...and yet the most euphoric liberation she had ever known aside from one other thing.
Leeka had been born with expectation, the daughter of the first magiker in centuries. It had been thought she carried the gift in her blood, which evidently was not the case. She had no power in the least and would have been coined the disappointment, the broken-heir. All that grooming for an anti-climax. Sometimes Leeka thought a greater power had taken pity on her and traded that sorrow for another, the complete and utter loss of her homeland. Ma and da too... she thought idly, gazing at the sky high above as a dance of light caught her attention. I wonder which was kinder...
And yet, out of the chaos, came something beautiful, a gift Leeka couldn't find the words to say thank you for. She was allowed to be... her. Herself and nothing else. Free to move and run as she pleased, to build her life with her own choices with no one to second-guess them. For in Helovia she was just Leeka. Leeka of the Worlds Edge.
The story was finally hers -- and only hers.
Magic always comes at a price.
As if on cue the heavens above burst into a phantasmal display of luminous greens, flickering in swaying motions that arced and danced as unevenly as licks of flame on an entire theater of black stars. It bathed the land in hues of eerie green, tinting the snowbound steppes into a variable summer land for once. It was simply enchanting, yet as soon as she was able to see it the image blurred unexpectedly. It took a few blinks to discover the culprit and the tears ran warmly down her cheeks, quickly running to a luke temperature before trailing off the side of her face. An expected response, really. She did easily lose herself in reminiscing and it didn't take much to move her to tears either, silly thing. The thought elicited a curt chuckle, a sort of joke at herself as it were. You have to work on this. Right now is fine, but seriously, before it becomes embarrassing, okay?
What was unexpected, however, was the approach of footsteps in a hurry, beating like a drum in the silent air. Standing on a ledge it only took a moment to locate a dark figure below rushing across the field steppe at a blind pace, the snow thrown carelessly about in a gust in its wake. A thread of fear and panic pierced the spotted mare's heart when she recognized the figure as a unicorn and at that probably a Basin member. Leeka had only heard gossip about the Unicorns of the Basin and from what she could divine there were plenty of mixed feelings about them. The one thing that was certain, however, is that they had a reputation and one of fear and hate, even in the Worlds Edge. Leeka didn't want to believe but the impression had sunk in regardless- Basiners were best to be avoided. As far as she knew the Frostbreath Steppes were technically unclaimed by any herd so she couldn't possibly be intruding, and as far as she could tell she hadn't been spotted either. She hoped it might remain that way.
Ducking her head, Leeka hide behind what sparse vegetation was around, hoping to remain undetected as the figure passed below. What she didn't notice, to her detriment, was the iced-over stream her front hoof was placed on, covertly covered in snow. As the black unicorn came well within sight and was passing below the shell of ice broke, its cave in presided by a horrendously loud crack, plunging her foot into fridge water and tossing blocks of ice to tumble down the hill as well, thoroughly exposing her presence to the world. Leeka could only gaze down at the stranger who could not have been more then fifteen feet away with a sheepish expression on her face, completely embarrassed and frightened at the same time.
"Sorry."
She was sorry for cracking the ice, sorry for exposing herself and sorry for drawing your attention. Forgive her.
_____________________
"talking."
Thoughts
@[Valka]
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Image Credits
- table by Niki -
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