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ARELI
Autumn in Helovia is something you’ve never seen before, but right away, you know you love it. Even with your imperfect vision, the trees are bright bunches of color, and the falling leaves are beautiful blurs that have you craning your head at an uncomfortable angle just for the pleasure of watching them fall. And the feeling of the dry underbrush and paper-thin leaves crunching under your hooves! You get the most delicious sensation stomping and shuffling your way through the forest, and you’ve spent happy hours at a time winding your way around trees and dodging bushes. Behind you a thin trail of exposed earth bares its chest to the nippy autumn breeze, standing out in stark contrast to the debris-blanketed floor. It’s almost comical, it appears as if a crazed mole or a giant drunken snail has taken up residence in the neighborhood—if only it weren’t for your teacup hoofprints that give you away.
On this crisp autumn morning, you’re amusing yourself easily enough—one has to when one hasn’t many playfellows. You take a step, then pitch your weight forward quickly, daring yourself to stumble. Of course you don’t, for your balance has improved greatly since you were born. And though you don’t realize it, your vision and hearing have slowly evolved as well: they are nowhere near perfect, but nobody ever told you that anything was wrong with them in the first place. To you, it is all like walking—shouldn’t everything get better as you get older? It’s only natural.
Anyway, there you are, carving your solitary little trail, when you look up and realize that you are nearing the edge of what you know as home. Little brown wings flutter nervously, sending down drifting lazily away from you in puffs. You get the feeling that Mama wouldn’t like you to stray this far. You begin to turn away, but then something in the distance catches your good eye…wait a minute, isn’t that one of those weird upside-down trees? A memory of the Secret Grove surfaces, and you gaze ahead wistfully. You’d wanted to play amongst the willows’ curtains longer last time, but Mama had left, and so you’d had to leave them behind too. And while you’d never left the Edge without Mama…but they were right there, right? Besides, if Mama had taken you there before, surely it couldn’t hurt…with a slippery, stomach-flipping feeling of anxious excitement, you move forward.
But you never reach your target. “’Lios? Illy!” You squeal with delight at the familiar form of your older brother, bounding clumsily up to him. Then, the realization hits you: what if he tells? He must’ve seen you and what you were doing, where you were going. Your bound slows to a scuttling sidle, and in a loud whisper, you order him, “Dooon’ tell Mama, Illy. Dooon’ tell, ‘kay?”
@[Ilios]
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