Gull

Though your chest heaves in an attempt to recover from the coughing fit, the cavern is silent apart from the sound of your breath. Out of the corner of your eye, you see a dark shape swoop and disappear, but the bat doesn’t concern you: it’s what lies beyond that does. Has something within the maze disturbed it, or was it merely your choking echoes that wakened it from its slumber? Little do you know that your bat is not a bat at all, but Lilómiel come to scout for his mistress, whom you had disturbed.

Warily, you begin to press forward again, but you have only taken a few steps before the cough is back with a vengeance, clawing its way from your throat with a startling pain. Legs brace for support, and your nostrils flare, bright pink membranes on display like white flags of surrender. What’s going on here? You’re not one much for superstition, but the sudden onset of your unusual symptoms makes you even more uneasy. You wonder if this place is cursed, if poison lies in pockets of air ahead, or something worse.

Before you have time to get thoroughly spooked however, the coughing subsides just in time for you to hear the light clink of hooves on ice. Someone is coming down the passage, you realize, and you raise your wings a little, alert. And then, from the depths of the ice comes a grinning skull. Your heart rate spikes briefly before you realize that the skull is attached to a body, and the body of a filly nonetheless. As she approaches on long, graceful legs, you size her up and relax slightly. She looks about a year old, and aside from her rather morbid facial markings, there is nothing inherently threatening about her. With a degree of curiosity, you notice that she’s one of those horse-creatures, the kind that had been long extinct back home. Blue eyes regard her neutrally, watching her watch you, and then she breaks the silence. “Are you dying?” she asks, studying you, and you find yourself rather surprised at the tone she takes. There is a certain maturity to it, perhaps boredom even that you would not have expected from one so young. But then again, you think wanly, what do you know about kids?

A little amused, you begin to laugh, but the laugher soon turns into another bout of violent coughing. Eyes streaming, you face her with a wry smirk. “Nope,” you reply, “Already dead.”


@[Nymeria]

trouble just grew wings