08-01-2016, 06:10 PM
She had been watching the storm approach most of the morning, a wall of steel-bellied clouds that now sank in slow motion down the slope of the mountain. She had learned at a young age which of the clouds would break apart and fade away the further they travelled, which clouds promised only to take away the sun and give nothing back. But these clouds, these clouds were full of snow, full of cold and winter and even the wind woke up to greet them, to pull them greedily close. Australis loved these clouds. She loved standing out in the storm until she was so cold and so snow-blind that she was forced to disappear into the vast tunnel system of the caves beneath the mountain. She loved coming back out again to find a new world waiting to greet her.
For a while, until the sun managed to peel apart the clouds and find its footing again, the Tundra would look like an entirely different place. It was still home, still safe, but when the wind pushed around the drifts and snow filled out the hollow places, the kingdom was brand new again. It was only when the sun began to melt the snow, when powder turned to glaze and the newness was sweated away, that things returned to looking tired and brown and she wondered how this frozen place could ever sustain so many horses. But it did and it always would, because there was something magical about this frozen fortress. Something about the cold and stony solitude was like a beacon to the broken, to the lost. They could come here and find newness again, just like the kingdom. Sometimes, it was good to be new.
She lifts her dark brown face to the sky just as the first flurries of snow begin to fall, and for a moment her eyes disappear beneath the rush of the wind as it tangles her mane around the angles of her head. For a long while she says nothing, does nothing, just keeps those bright eyes closed and her chin lifted to the sky. At first the snow melts against her skin, darkening the bay dapples across her hips and shoulders, but then the winter seeps deeper and white powder pools in the hollow of her back. She isn’t sure how long she stays that way, but when she opens her eyes with a shiver that traces down her spine, the world has already changed just a little. There is less brown, less of that ugly gray-green, and the branches in the pine trees creak and groan and grumble with the new weight.
With a smile that is soft against her dark mouth, she shifts, shaking the snow from her skin and shrugging off towards the mountains to see if there is a cave nearby. She will wait out the storm there, find shelter through the ever-approaching night because even she doesn’t love the storm enough to be buried by it.
For a while, until the sun managed to peel apart the clouds and find its footing again, the Tundra would look like an entirely different place. It was still home, still safe, but when the wind pushed around the drifts and snow filled out the hollow places, the kingdom was brand new again. It was only when the sun began to melt the snow, when powder turned to glaze and the newness was sweated away, that things returned to looking tired and brown and she wondered how this frozen place could ever sustain so many horses. But it did and it always would, because there was something magical about this frozen fortress. Something about the cold and stony solitude was like a beacon to the broken, to the lost. They could come here and find newness again, just like the kingdom. Sometimes, it was good to be new.
She lifts her dark brown face to the sky just as the first flurries of snow begin to fall, and for a moment her eyes disappear beneath the rush of the wind as it tangles her mane around the angles of her head. For a long while she says nothing, does nothing, just keeps those bright eyes closed and her chin lifted to the sky. At first the snow melts against her skin, darkening the bay dapples across her hips and shoulders, but then the winter seeps deeper and white powder pools in the hollow of her back. She isn’t sure how long she stays that way, but when she opens her eyes with a shiver that traces down her spine, the world has already changed just a little. There is less brown, less of that ugly gray-green, and the branches in the pine trees creak and groan and grumble with the new weight.
With a smile that is soft against her dark mouth, she shifts, shaking the snow from her skin and shrugging off towards the mountains to see if there is a cave nearby. She will wait out the storm there, find shelter through the ever-approaching night because even she doesn’t love the storm enough to be buried by it.