The filly’s mind whirled at an alarming clip – fractious and unending, yielding to nothing but vast images and curiosity brimming, brewing, ricocheting along the intervals of her heart and mind. Vastra’s details of her prior escapades were just enough to spark the rise of her indulgence (trees with leaves the color of the ocean, glowing mushrooms, birds more stark, more brilliant, paler than the clouds), but most intriguing was the wall of fire. She bristled almost immediately, a spark, an ignition of movement and sound, chipper and resplendent. “Wow!” She shuddered with excitement, following her down into the shadows, into the depths, into the wide, open, gaping maw that didn’t swallow, didn’t consume, and didn’t send her down into the rumored denizens of the underworld.
If Vastra thought the little thing was going to be bored, she was about to be surprised.
Because no sooner had she seen the fire wall, with flickers of bright, blistering crimson and orange canvas, a tapestry of inexplicable embers, did she rampage towards it, a seething torrent of movement and motion, gesturing to it with immense appeal and satisfaction, ablaze, enlivened, enraptured just by the shifting shapes, by the haunting portraits, by the sensation of promised embers. “Whoa!” She shouted, barely paying attention to the ridiculous echoes of her yells, glancing back and forth from Vastra to the wall, completely enamored by the shred of colors and lights, the reeling majesty, the glimpse of danger and fervor. “This is sooooo cool!” She leaped and bounded further down the cavern panel, touching her soft maw to the surface, hoping some of the hues would shimmer on her frame too, and she could be touched by fire, by fury, by might. The inquiry was eternal, because her mind processed the nuances, the potency, the lethality and vibrancy of it all – but not the whys and hows, the complexities of its existence, of its enthrallment. So little Melita’s head turned and twisted right back to Vastra’s all-knowing figure (because she’d seen it all before, and she must have understood everything about everything). “How does it do this?”
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