I saw who it was—someone completely unfamiliar, too small and young to be any sort of danger to me. A filly. But even that knowledge didn’t really assure me; in fact, I couldn’t do anything to release the tension in my body even if I wanted to. It felt like I was knotted up and stuck, my limbs splayed slightly underneath me, my breath short and fast like the beating of my heart. For all intents and purposes, it might as well have been a cougar staring me down with the corner of a cave flat across my backside. Trapped. There was a filly here and I woulda bet all my pocket change in that moment that it was me.

*"Yo, I like your hair."*

It was so far removed from what I was expecting (what was I expecting?) that it didn’t even register as a compliment. Well, actually, the words themselves didn’t register at all; if voices could be blurry then this girl’s voice was certainly doing it, smudging on my mind in distorted tones and mixes that stretched and compressed and twisted her words into things incomprehensible. It didn’t help that your fear for me spiked dramatically when you felt I couldn’t understand her words—guess it was the heat of rushing blood, or something. A fever (but why was I feverish? How was I sick? I never get sick--)

There was only one sentence she spoke that really glued my attention to her, snapping my eyes onto her face with greedy suspicion: You look like the Time God. My already furious heart quickened even further and there was a sprk! from the tip of my horn—the tiniest squirt of lightning from me. A knee-jerk reaction, I guess, as my own panic started to rise (why was I panicking?). The last vestiges of the nightmare’s darkness still hadn’t really left me and (Are you happy to hear now--) it was starting to do strange shit (--that even though your mother was raped--) to my eyes and now my ears, too, ringing with (--by a god--) an echo that couldn’t bounce off the ice of the cavern even if it wanted to. Because it didn’t exist.

I backed away from the girl, even though she was still speaking and giving her name and doing polite things that I was incapable of doing (--you're awful--). She asked me if I was alright and it was an automatic thing that got my tongue moving mechanically, without even thinking. “’M fine,” I said, with the same vagueness that I had spoke to you earlier, “I’m cool, I’ll be cool, I’m—“ But then I caught myself; I stopped backing away, my hooves digging into the snow beneath me, and it was like my mind was trying to catch up with the impulse of my body. What was I doing? Why was my heart beating so fast?

“J-just stay away from me,” I stammered, and even that somehow turned into a growl from my throat; I turned from the girl and tried walking away, shoving myself from her presence, because of course she was a Basiner and even though I’d never ever seen her before in my life, she was a thing I wasn’t ready to face just yet.



@[Zünden]--Posted because time and muse! If you'd rather me wait for Adelric to post, I can always delete!
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