A griffin leads your sister. Your sister leads you.

She abandons mother to her sleep, lost in dreams and bitter morning cold, and would’ve left you too if you hadn’t shifted yourself out of your dreams in just the nick of time. “Psst, hey!” you whisper after her, but the girl is going, going, going, and you scramble as quick and quietly to your feet before she is gone.

You wonder what that thing is that she’s following (it’s a griffin, I said that earlier, but you don’t know that quite yet). It really doesn’t matter to you anyway, besides the fact that you don’t know—but you’re confident that you will learn, eventually. Somehow, at any rate. One day. Probably.

It’s a tiny throng that you come to, led by a woman (now, she must be old enough to have kids!) with a pretty white coat and even prettier silver armor lying about in front of her. You also notice the Great Big King who allowed you roomspace, and your sister is rude of course, and you understand why, and you wish, for a second, that you could allow yourself to be rude as well. “Hello,” you say with a genteel lisp, so appropriately little-girlish, acknowledging the king as one must when one’s in their presence. You’re getting this whole poise thing down quite well. “Good morning,” you say to the woman, polite and polished and precious, “my name is Enyo,” you offer, because you’re quite sure you’ve never seen this woman before.

So many white-pelted ladies here in the Edge. It makes you pause. You’re so black, so totally and completely covered in night-fur, and something tugs at you anxiously, wondering how something so dark and proud can fit in the silken mists?
”Hello everyone, great day, is it not?”

Oh my goodness, how perfectly ridiculous!

You look up, and smile despite yourself. You cannot help it. It is the ghost of laughter that you keep bottled up good and tight and proper inside, because it’s rude to outright laugh in someone’s face. But you cannot help it! She’s such an awful, unfortunate creature! Good lord, look at her coat! Spotted and splotched with little bits of mud—and those wings! Oh my goodness, those wings. You do not think you’ve seen something so stupid in your life. It’s no wonder you’re struggling not to laugh—the child looks as though she is a walking, breathing clown! And of course, as she bumps into the King’s rear end, that’s exactly how it must seem.

“Yes it is a great day!” you answer her with pristine glee; you press your nose into Ozzy’s chest as though cold, and you allow a trickle of giggling to rest there in her pelt. “She’s so ugly,” you breath into the crook of your sister’s neck as you fight off the tears threatening to prick the edges of your eyes. The moment passes soon enough. You regain your composer, and yet you continue to press against Ozzy for another few moments. It turns out you really were cold.

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