Visions unfamiliar and undecipherable flashes through her skull, painting images of colored bodies and curved necks and pretty smiles. So many. Corpses press together into a solid mass colored brown and black and white and splashed with vivid, unlabelled shades she's never seen before; she can smell them, a reek of horseflesh rolling in her nares, and her Lil, soaring and wheeling above, shows her the furry bodies weaving, nimble, between hoofed limbs— companions.

Yet more importantly to the nimble black, the dragons. Veritable flocks of them, gleaming dull blue and shiny red and glowing copper, all the shades of the rainbow. There's even whites vying for his ruby retinas' attention, flashes of ivory amongst darkness; she can feel his yearning to join them, the tug of his heartstrings. And worse, beneath that veneer of excitement, she feels the twist of his tripes, the desire to obey and fall into his place in the natural draconian hierachy. It cannot be allowed. Her Lilómiel must strive to overcome the colors— otherwise there would be trouble when they had need to fight against an equine with a blue dragon, or a hybrid with a silver.

Thoughts skip, flash, to Ophelia, to days dancing in the snow and prancing with her brother, and she hesitates in her steady step, a lull in her confidence. Images, smoky with Mongrel's witchcraft, rise to the forefront of her mind, carved with blood and her mother's ire.

Then they fall away as she steps from the trees and into the gathering. With the damp of bodies hemming her in, crowding in on a filly so small, so fragile, in comparison to the warriors and the gladiators, the kings and the queens, she cannot help the cursed anxienty knitting away in her breast. Precious lips soften, brows upturning; worry creases, furrows, itself into the lines of her forehead. Deep-rooted instinct and teachings murmur to her, a gentle background rumble urging her to watch for escape routes. It wouldn't do to get caught and trampled in the midst of this, especially not with her young as she was.

Above her, Lilómiel shrees a cry of glee, wings tangling in the breeze and cruising upwards, sinuous muscles pumping him ever higher into the blue yonder. In the crushing press of bodies, all she can hear is the thud-thud-thud of her insistent heart in her ears, all she can feel the gallop against her ribs. By the Moon's smile. Why were there so many?!

The skull-faced daughter lingers on the fringes, waiting— waiting for her brother. He would know what to do. He always did.