I have been watching her, this ghost of the hidden falls. Both names are aptly given considering how hard a time I've had at tracking her. I had thought I'd hurried that day in the welcoming forest, but even so she had slipped away from me, as though vanished, her invitation a puff of smoke that dispersed into nothing. Since then I've been intrigued, obsessed even, at finding her. That task wasn't so arduous given some time and wings, but learning anything substantial about the mare was another thing entirely. Perhaps I was rusty at my talents, an inclination I had never chosen butt rather fell into under the careful watch of a dragon - not that I remembered any of this, but it was there all the same. It was probably better assumed however, that she was just that good.

A branch swayed underneath my lightweight body as I landed in a flutter of darkness. Beady eyes blinked back ink as I sat, drawn into a raven by magic and will. I watched her again this day, the last day. For all my misguided and mysterious ways I was not without purpose. Though stalking hardly became me, it was a means to an end, an end which I had decidedly made today.

All in all it was a choice being made, though isn't everything in life? I decided that I could indeed live here, as she had suggested a season ago.

The branch swayed as I left it, wet wings whipping the wind, small body spiraling down towards the czarina. I settle on her rump, if she didn't shy, head tilting back and forth in bird like fashion, but at such close proximity surely she would see there was more to this raven than feathers and hunger. I left stains where I went, and wherever I settled I gradually leaked. Still, from afar, it was hard to pick me out from a crowd. I appreciated that privacy.

Another stroke of my wings and a twist of my abilities and I was flesh, bone, hair, INK. At her side the haunted boy she crossed in the snow now stood, my eyes glittering with mischief. I bobbed my head in silent greeting, the only kind I knew, and settled in comfortably, a hip cocked to the side in announcement as such. The other horses were of little consequence, though I shot them a glance all the same.

She invited me, so here I was. Home.