Яikyn

Soft feathers flutter into my hiding place.

I watch them, their slow drifting dance, and wonder if I’m dying – and, if I’m dying, why it is my brain has chosen to see brown feathers, rather than white, and black, aglitter with gold. At least the vibrancy within the moss, the grasses, the strange sight of their re-growth amidst ice sort of makes sense, but these shimmering, coffee feathers…

Tiny hoof beats lift my ears. My eyes move from the feathers and up, towards the sound. Perhaps I am not dying, I think, as her little face peers through the awning of green things, as she dances in after her feathers. I see the wet smudge of snow across her shoulder, notices the way she avoids its use as much as she can while still shuffling into the shallow cavern, as clearly as I notice that she is quite young. Obviously, she’s terrified. Any other time, any other day, I might use it my advantage, chase her about the swirling snows outside until her breath came ragged, gasping.

I only look at her now, wondering what the First Gods mean by sending me a strange pegasus, so close to the land of unicorns.

“Rhoa?”

Hell no, I think, rolling my eyes in time with my head, turning away from her, a shallow snort escaping my nostrils; despite having crawled into a cave myself, in the midst of a heavy storm, not much different in age than she is, despite having whispered mother to find no answer, and not some just a name of some companion or another…

No one cared for me, when I was lost - and I am not Rhoa. I am Rikyn, and I can’t help her find her way home.

The snort draws her like flies to honey, or maybe it’s the blood, the pool of it her chocolate feathers cling to like the leaves of the willow, in the grove, to the southwest, to the shores of the pond hidden there.

“Hello?” her small voice trembles through the darkness.

Leave me alone, little sparrow, I think, in silence.

She doesn’t. Her voice picks up volume, speed, the emotions in her voice changing from worry for herself to worry for me.

Is it really that bad? Or has she just never seen anything terrible before?

It’s not until she asks me where I live - nowhere - that I look back at her from the strangely vivid green of the icy wind cover shielding us from the blizzard outside. She says she will bring someone back here. I don’t think she has the slightest clue how dumb that makes her sound, so I let my backward slipped ears rise and my clenched jaw loosen, forcing myself to turn towards her.

All my anger, all the harsh words I’d wanted to throw at her, they crumble into a panting half sob, half yelp of pain as my ribs scream at me for asking this of them, the flaps of severed flesh along my hip grotesquely twisting to reveal the pale white tissues within, the dappled pricks of red vein obvious. The world sort of wobbles, but I manage, looking at her with residual pain laced across each feature.

"It’s just a dragon bite," I say, like it’s a splinter, because the blood doesn’t hurt as bad as the broken bones do, throbbing, each heavy stab a white light stealing the sight of her and the black cavern from me, "besides, it’s hell out there. Why do you think I’m even here, if travel was possible?"

A grunt breaks from me as I rudely look back out into the swirling, white arms of the snow visible through the overhang, not having enough patience to explain the obvious with tact, or to be thankful she gives a damn about some strange, bleeding man.

there's no place to hide down here