She had met him powerless, without shadow and without a veil: naked and vulnerable just as she was… a creature of dark fur and spattered roaning, of sickly form and figure. Ether had talked of Heartfire, of Dovev- of the others that she recognized as family; but even when he spoke of them, she could not deviate her mind from task: and she had continue. Yet? The mountain and the fairies have ended for now… the cold water no longer soaking her skin and the heart-shaped pond was a memory… both journeys to and from. Ether presented a new challenge to her when the shadows enveloped and covered him, as the darkness returned and he grew wrapped and encompassed in it: in all the black and endless penumbra.
Briella, for all her bravery, fears this… and the inky tendrils do not bode well when suddenly they are seeking to wrap and touch- to take her through and into them.
She screams.
Not wailing misery but panic, terror and true fear: her small body practically skittering suddenly as she bucks and turns- shoots away from him and back towards the Fairies- calling out and begging for them to help.
The darkness is the only thing in the world she hates, and Ether is shrouded in it.
Tired as she is what little energy she has goes into trying to hide herself, trying to shove herself into the thin and almost impossibly narrow entrance of a rock cavern: the bones of her hips just barely making it inside; but fortunately, or unfortunately, she is so sick that barely any fat coats her body and she is able to get in. Able to turn well enough Briella backs herself in and tries to get as low as she can- tries to hide away from the creature whose body seems neither solid nor real.
He promises family, speaks in a way that she recognizes as Heartfire’s accent, and yet she terrified of the grasping darkness and all its inky form. In contradiction, however, she realizes the cavern is dark: she realizes that she has lodged herself in the very black she sought to avoid and frets so desperately as she wiggles free.
In her mind she misses the large silvery Leopard Seal, the battered penguins and how it waited for her as if it knew she would be back. That Seal, she thinks, could easily bite away these shadows.
Home is not what makes her reconsider, instead it is the memory of how he followed her- how he trailed behind and with her: never letting her go far out of sight and how he seemed to console her even with nightmare and exhaustion. Tentative and slow she wanders closer, eyeing the bleak shadows and their master, timidly walking into them with an extension of trust shown.
She recalls the void, the end- the bitter silence and darkness, the expanse of lightless regions she had been trapped in for years. “Please… don’t leave me here.” she whines, walking beside and with: traversing the darkness and guided entirely by Ether.
When the darkness pries itself open she sees the edges of plants she does not recognize, and she hears the serene waves battering the sand and lazy in their ebb and flow. Her eyes widen and for a moment she recognizes that she is not as cold as she had been: that here there is a slight warmth to the breeze and the salty tang in the air is near impossible to miss. “This isn’t home?” she questions- looking back and stepping around the darkness.
Call it luck, or call it bizarre coincidence but something catches her eye: a brown hairy lump on the ground that seems to have fallen from a tree. Curious she approaches it, almost forgetting about Ether and the conundrum of home: her teeth gnawing at the husk and hoof kicking it about the ground as she notes the way it rolls. Her attention of course, does come back and she promptly drags the nut back to Ether- staring at him, tiny ears swiveling and eyes widen.
“Wher go m’home now?” she mangles her words: mouth full.