06-09-2017, 06:54 PM
Her nose still smarts from the encounter with the crab. The crustacean was cruel and she dreamt of stomping them all to bits and eradicating the ashen shores of them. But she could hear her mother’s counsel in her ear already, about how everything had it’s place in the world from something as lowly as a crab to someone like Praise who had yet to even find her place in it. She was too content, so much so that it bred malcontent in her and she felt like she was beginning to despise the heat of Tephra despite her attempt to keep herself cool in the blue length of the river.
Praise starts to think of darker places, like forests that promise no way out and deep tangles of moss and root. She’d even prefer a cave right now, full of spiders and damp just to keep the sun off her pale apricot back. Beneath it, she gleamed as bone does in the light, sleek and inviting because Tephra had been good to her, kept her sheltered and she’d never once thought to leave it, even to explore. So she grew not quite fat but well cared for, feasting on marsh grass and seaweed. She grew up and into herself, small and sharp, like a primrose but one that belonged to no bush and began to go wild simply because she had no direction and no idea on what to do with herself.
Being a productive member of the land held no interest for her, and she watched the members of her family come and go like the seasons. She was the only one that stayed, fixed like a star, on the shores and slopes of Tephra. Until now, as the malcontent unsettles her and uproots her, drives forth from all that is familiar and towards the dark of the forest that beckons on long spindled fingers of branch and twig, as if to say come here. First her step was emboldened as she took to the dappled paths of light and dark, felt them play across her pale apricot skin as she moved ever deeper and the light grew less and the dark became more.
Praise grew timid, less sure of herself and soon enough she was sure she wasn’t on the same trail any more. This was new, this sensation of being lost and it left her with a puzzled frown on her face as she looked this way and that, seeing only thick tangle of tree after tree and shadow after shadow. It occurred to her that there must be wolves in a place like this, and not all wolves wore the same shape instinct would make her run from. This pinched her face further into disapproval as she glared at the tricksy path beneath her feet as if the way out lay in the secrets the dirt would not tell her about. She huffed, and dug her hoof at the path to ease some of her frustration but it did little to settle the fast growing thump of her heart in her thin unnerved breast.