Alone.
Your ears twitch every time one of your tiny feet hits the ground. Habit - you expect to hear the fall of other feet. For however long you can remember, there have always been more. The three of you - the two of you - a many-legged beast, its hearts all pumping to the same song. Now there is only your own heart. Now there is only the music of your own feet, and it's dull. Your eyes dance, huge and full of shadows, from one rocky feature to the next. And your heart beats too fast without the slow pulse of Mama's beside it. Blood slicks through your veins hot and restless. You search. You don't call it searching because you can't bear to call Mama lost, but you search. Every now and then your walk pitter-patters into a trot and your head lifts, swan'ts throat elongating, vocal cords fluttering out an imperceptible hum. Why don't you cry out, Virga? You want to, but you swallow the noise before it comes out. You can't. You don't know why, except something like fear shifts in your eyes and now you hesitate, your nostrils flaring to suck anxiously at the cool wind.
(Where are you?)
The breeze, so slight, bears any suggestion of familial blood away from you. So you can't be blamed if you don't notice the pair (trio?) on the ridge, at first. You don't even know the big one, and the little one is so small, anyway, so easily lost in this labyrinth of rock and snow...
When you do notice, everything freezes.
And your sister - you know her like breathing - is no longer familiar as breath to you. How? What is that thing tumbling in the air and around her head like a lost angel? Who is that, so much bigger than her, patterned black and silver, towering above her? Your first reaction is fear. This isn't surprising though, is it, Virga? Your first reaction is always fear.
Your second reaction would be deadly if you were older.
You run.
Your body, your fragile body made of spindles and black porcelain, launches forward. Hooves once so unreliable upon the rocks of your homeland find purchase easily, and everything in you sails hard, fast, immediate up up up. You make the last two strides a leap; wings flutter uselessly at your sides, baby fluff molting slowly into what will - of course - be one day magnificent. Your landing is a crash, an almost-tangle of long legs twisting and then untangling, and you thrust your dainty nose at Vesper urgently, breathing in - breathing in. All the while, your body screams in its quiet language, rough and anxious, twitching, hovering, begging (please let us be reunited). It's almost like a prayer. You crave so dearly what has recently been gone; you almost convince yourself you don't care about the change in her scent, or the bundle of wind-scent upon her back, soft too with baby fluff. You want her to greet you, tell you everything is fine. You want to be whole again. But it's not just the two of you here, now - there is another (intruder).
Resentful, your black gaze finds the giant dwarfing you both. You should maybe thank him for keeping an eye on your sister, but you're so upset about your sister gone you're apt to take it out on the nearest unimportant thing. So wild-eyed you glare, no menace in your tiny body as your wings fluff like a songbird's and your little ears twist, muzzle wrinkling like an old man's. What are you? says the look. You are not mine.
You forget, in your innocence, how often wrong you are.
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