like a jar, you housed infinite tenderness
and infinite tenderness shattered you, like a jar

Winter fucking sucks. Movement means more warmth than staying still, though, so Yael walks and walks and walks. At night, she sleeps under the boughs of trees and builds herself little nests of branches in which to keep warm. It isn't hard to track her progress across the vast, foreign land. Every step is new. Every smell requires deciphering. Every sound puts her on alert. And oh, the time she has to think!

Births and deaths replay themselves in her head; her dreams all take place beneath a particular oak tree - but her lover, the only one she desperately needs to see - never comes. This makes for long, lonesome nights and somber, heavy days. Every now and then  the golden stranger will come across another horse in the distance, but she never feels the need to approach. It is safer not to. Best keep her distance, for there is no telling how anyone might react. And then there is the fear of bursting into tears again... the incident in the Threshold was quite embarrassing... Yael is not used to such unseemly, uncontrollable behavior from herself. And if she is honest with herself, she can't guarantee it won't happen again.

Eventually, the black-tipped Pegasus comes to the other coast, where hibernating land gives way to sand. She smiles as her hooves take their first steps into the ground and sink ever so slowly. Yael stands their for awhile, contemplating the last time she stood in her desert home, until a soft murmur of voices pull her attention down the beach. Her brown gaze flickers warily, but curiosity gets the best of her. Besides - she can run well in sand if need me (and fly too, but nevermind that). Cautiously, Yael advances towards the large group as quietly as she can, all nerves working overtime.

HR hooves hit something smooth - colorful glass - and it makes her pause, looking quizzically down at the beautiful surface. Odd. Very odd. She smells it briefly, and decides it is safe to continue forward, but she finds herself pausing at the edge of the gathering, behind other pegasi and unicorns and regular horses too, straining to hear what is said. If she could see Leanna amongst them all, she might go and try to stand by her - but this is not her party; Yael may be uninvited, but at the very least she is no threat.




"Talk."