Ba-bump

Normal, a template borne from the base genetic make-up with the executive intent to inspire change. Deviancy, anomalies derived of a primordial desperation to survive in a world where only the strongest prevail. Or, perhaps it is intelligence that drives success, for where would Helovia be if not for its brightest minds? I liked to think it was a delicate mixture of the two, tipping always on that thin line we all seemed to walk. But then where would that leave me? The horses like me? The ubiquitous singularity that walks among the masses, speckled throughout every herd and walk of life. We exist in synchronicity with life and death as all things do, we see and hear, making decisions based on observation and experience. Yet for all the similarities we share, there is that irrevocable fact that stands out above anything we might hope to achieve - we aren't normal.

Ba-bump.

Light, a concept that I had nearly given up on in the past few... months? Years? I could no longer tell. My senses had numbed in the strangest way, caressed by darkness, tempted into something less than alert. Here though was an even more bizarre experience, the feeling of warmth filtering across my skin. The flesh of my face prickled, goose-pimples erupting across the expanse of my hide, tail sweeping irritably. Dark lashes fluttered over opalescent eyes that could not decide whether to focus or remain blown out of proper sight. Greens, blues, and soft yellows exploded into clarity with a special kind of pain, lancing angrily through my temples. I had partially forgotten what a tree looked like, but upon seeing them properly in what felt like forever, it was a deluge of memory and feeling.

There was no time to sort through the images and heart-break that filled the cracks and holes in my heart, reminding me of why I had wandered off to start with. Who in their right mind put themselves through such ache and dissent? For family? Community? Loyalty? All fragile and breakable concepts. I had been lost in a most terrible way, struggling to get home, to find my mother and... nobody cared. Not really, they had their own problems to contend with, who was I? The crippled waif who got in the worlds way. I shake my head, banishing the horrors to the dark corners of my mind, crying out while my expression revealed only tentative curiosity - if not a tad strained.

"Talk."

@Astarot I lied lol here is some trash to root in *snuff snuff*

There is something undeniably comforting in sound, large and small, soft and loud. Perhaps for many it represented finality, truth, existence on a plain where otherwise we might wander beneath an empty chasm of gravity. This sound was unexpected, but not unwelcome. I turn my nose toward the disturbance, eyes following suit in order to see who it was that had stumbled upon me. Suddenly sound was not the right word, this needed something stronger, something... personal. There was no explanation for the pulse of excitement that crawled across painted skin, the dance of tired hooves upon the pine-mold. To believe that after all these past months of wandering, lost and alone, hurting and aching for what could never be - such a lovely sight would lie waiting at the end of that nasty tunnel.

"Syrena!" I gush, for it was the only respectful thing you could call it. There was a moment of sheer bliss as something bright and lively ruptured across the surface of my heart. A feeling I had nearly forgotten (and so young too.) wormed its way through the darkness, spreading veins of joy and exhilaration as it jerked fiercely on my heartstrings.

I could not begin to understand how this mare brought such unmitigated glee upon me. How the very expression of her typical, mundane presence, could elicit such longing from within. Her blue coat was as I remembered, albeit hazy and faded in my minds eye, I knew it to be she, no doubt about it. "Oh Syrena, Syrena!" like a small child I thrust myself at the mare, who yet held weight over my growing figure (not for long though). No manner of restraint could withhold the desperation that held me, gripped me tight and pulled me from perdition.

"Talk."

@Syrena

It should have been exciting to see the grey mare even remotely interested in my qualms. Instead it was vaguely unnerving, though not enough to disturb the joy coursing through my veins. It was a feeling that would not be so easily quashed, for every fiber of my being fought to keep it alive. Black hooves shuffled across the pine mold, drawing me up close to the mare, chest heaving. "I went looking, for my mother," I explain, voice tremulous with emotion "but I did not find her. I got lost instead, I do not know how long I've been stuck in that darkness...". Darkness that threatened every vestige of happiness I claimed as each word rolled off my tongue, hot and heavy like poison in a pond.

(No!) My mind shoved, pressing against the familiar twinges of depression I had come to know so personally. Not with Syrena here, Syrena would banish such nastiness away, right? It was strange how in all the time I had been separated from my mother, from... Sialia, how this one mare seemed to have taken residence in my life. A solid pillar that albeit, was not always there, took more responsibility for my well being than she had any right to. I could jump back to that time on the beach, meeting her among the growing crowd and how she trailed after me everywhere I went. Before that we met in this place here, fighting off a bevy of forest creatures over what later was revealed to be an egg. An egg that still haunted my thoughts on occasion to be honest.

"I missed you." I admitted softly, bowing my head, ears tipped back in affection rather than aggression as I inched closer to the mares lower neck.

"Talk."

ooc - trash, trash, trash, trash
@Syrena

So little emotion passed over the woman's face, and if I was honest, it was briefly disheartening. I have known Syrena for most of my life at this point, and there was not a time that I recall seeing much more than vague curiosity upon her visage. Although now, as I gazed up at her with weepy blue eyes, her features were harder than normal, waxed into something more akin to a wall than typical indifference. Was that my fault? Was this in response to my utterance, my admitting my true feelings on the matter? She would not reject me would she!? A piece of my chest squeezed tighter than everything else, my heart fluttered at the possibility I had not dared consider when telling her such things. Syrena was my beacon, the light to my darkness, she always seemed to be there when I need her most, she would not let me down now! So when the words 'home' and 'safely' rolled off her smooth tongue, I knew at once that this was not how I wanted things to go.

For the first time in a long while, if not ever, I knew exactly what I wanted to do.

"No, no not home, somewhere else." I say softly, trying out the words like a new dress, they felt strange on my tongue. "Don't take me home Syrena, take me- take me to the Veins, so that I can speak to the Gods."

Outside of Syrena, no one else was privy to my physical ailments. In the last several months of being lost in the dark, I had learned to hone in on the pain, which was slowly becoming more specific to my hind-quarters, rather than my whole body. I discovered that if I focused on it enough, I could sort of lessen it in my head some, so that maybe it was not such a constant ache on my psyche. However, the reverberating pain in my bones was something I feared I would live with for the rest of my life, just as Mother had said. If I was going anywhere, it was to the one place that wishes might come true, if asked nicely enough. How would I manage to get anywhere 'safely' if my crippled self held the grey mare back? How could I live with the possibility of being confined behind the walls of nature in order to protect my well-being? I could not, so I would not.

"I cannot go back to that place, not yet, not until I at least try to fix myself! I cannot live knowing that I am no more than a burden to my people..." To people that hardly knew I existed, to people that did not care.

"Talk."

@Syrena