What I thought wasn't all

so innocent

Oh, those eyes. She had seen eyes like that before. In her father's face, when he thought she wasn't looking, mirrored in Mauja's entire visage and reflected back as she leaned over night-black pools to slake her thirst. It was a look of numbness, of grief too deep to put words on, of a weariness that had nothing to do with sore feet and travel dust. In meeting the two-toned gaze with her own mismatched eyes the wintry dove felt as though all the shadows she had tried to bury came back to life, rising like one from cloven feet trough lungs and guts until she felt the taste of sorrow upon her very tongue. It was a gaze too wounded to hold for long, and she soon averted her gaze, turned the head away so she wouldn't have to see.

Whatever it was that made him look so sad had to be grave indeed. Not something you asked about, not a thing to drag out into the light to look upon. He spoke, and the lack-luster voice only confirmed what her heart had already guessed; but his words pulled her attention away from how he spoke to what he spoke of.

Amusing, that's what it was. Over the span of the nearly full year she had lived, this complete and utter stranger was the first to actually treat her like a young, helpless little girl. It was too bad, really. He was too late. Her eyes had already seen too much, her thoughts were already stained with matters more commonly found in adults. Pain and sorrow and unspeakable horrors had aged her, to the point where she was able to smile sweetly while raising a milky swan wing beneath which a glint of ivory could be seen. A bow, strung around the appendage and carried so easily as were it an extension of her own body; elaborately carved and beautiful yet deadly none the less, so far from a toy as you could get.

"It's alright, sir, I can look after myself. Mother passed away some time ago but Father is still with me... he should still be in the Edge - unless he walked off somewhere again."

With a soft shrug she repositioned the wing against slender blue-tinted sides. Misty shapes drifted into focus as she breathed, her cold, icy breath lingering in the air and forming into ethereal butterflies that flitted on and off around her frame.

As she spoke, Erthë became aware of new presences around them. One by one, new faces joined in with her and when she turned to see who they were, she found to her mild surprise that she recognized some of them. The pale mare with the ebony hair had been there when lady Ophelia had lectured an upstart of a girl, and the chestnut pegasus called Rift she had met in this very forest not too long ago.


"Hello. Nice to meet you both. I'm Erthë, in case you didn't hear me the first time..." She smiled and nodded a greeting at them both, then turned her attention to the third arrival. Excitement churned in her stomach as she heard the mare declare herself as a Basin member. Though residing in the forests of the Edge these days, the young cygnet could never forget her time spent in the northern mountains. The biting cold, the curtains of dancing light and forbidding sentinels blocking the entrance to a hidden valley - it was the sort of thing that engraved itself into the mind of a child and lingered.

This particular person was a stranger to her, however, and though the horned lass made her greetings to Tangere as well, she still felt awkward with her hovering silently nearby. A bird cawed nearby and without really thinking about it she stepped closer to Rift as he came to stand beside her, far more comfortable with his awkward kindness than the painted would-be healer.

"As in, you cause the damage that the real healers have to clean up?"

The over-long tail curled around a leg, and not for the first time Erthë cursed her own tongue for running away without her. Why was it that she responded to insecurities by lashing out? The tone of her voice had been playful and mild but the words were a challenge in themselves, one she would have been wiser not to issue in the first place.

She wanted to sigh, but held back the urge and watched Tangere tensely, waiting for whatever reaction her cheek might provoke.