01-01-2019, 08:55 AM
Eurwen
in the winter, far beneath the bitter snows
The spotted mare stands shakily on the beach. Her hair no longer fluffy, but fluent and soft on her mostly-white body, her metallic golden mane now longer, and with a strength in her core as if she’d trained to slay this monster her whole life. Perhaps, the thought flashes through her mind quickly and quietly, she is even stronger than her Papa, right about now. But no, that can’t be right.
Thinking of her family, her shaky stance becomes more trembling, her fears allowed to enter her mind. What if she stays this way? Is she older than Oisín now or did her twin sister grow too, not knowing what happened? And Chryseis? Ears flat on her skull and into the tangled golden mane, it is only the shadows of her cousins nearby that help her realize that this is not a weird dream. This, this is fairy magic, the kind she’d always been warned about. But she has now gained a strength with which she had been able to help the others. The antlered mare that took them all with her, every little foal around gathered to her. The other foals themselves, too. That’s good, yes? Not all bad?
Slowly, she overcomes her shock. Her weirdly-overlong-legs move her towards the other two like a crippled old woman - stiff from the fight, and wobbly; the gait of a foal in an adult body. She’s quite sure they had been foals like her, too. The mare has a trait of bone, stretching over her body like armour, the stallion doesn’t look like he has anything, like Eurwen herself. She recognizes the chestnut roan colouring on them, so similar to her own if she hadn’t had this appaloosa overlay her mother had gifted her with. Roans, like her Papa and Chryseis and her Grammama and a whole lot of aunts and uncles. But to be honest, Eurwen hasn’t yet explored all of her family tree, and has not yet met Heartfire herself, so what would she know.
It’s not important. They have a task!
”Uhm, hi. I’m Eurwen. Let’s uhm, find some pebbles?” Twisting her ears in uncertainty, she looks at the two expectantly. They’ll know what to do, yes? Will they?
She gets the confirmation she needs from the boy-man (oof, he sounds unhappy), Dagen. Five pebbles, yes. The beach is littered with those, she see when she walks over to it - shiny, coloured ones, less shiny and duller ones, but all of them similarly smooth and most of them similar in size, too. Battered by the waves and the salt, they’ve come to rest here. But most of all - most of all these pebbles are one hundred percent plague-free.
The golden-maned filly (in the body of a mare) doesn’t know much of the plague. She only came to see a fairy! Now, she has survived a monster attack, and it depends on the remaining trio to help the fairies. She simply can’t give up now, even if she is quite uncertain how to move her legs without hitting any of the rocks around her. Or how to walk steadily, at all. Dutifully, she collects her selection of rocks. A green, oval one, shiny on the inside but with a scratched outside that makes it harder to see through. A white and still a bit pointy one, shaped like a salt crystal broken off the nearby coast and accidentally having landed here with the smooth ones (perhaps it is, but Eurwen is too busy searching the right stones that she doesn’t stop to think about it too much). The smoothest, gleaming black pebble she can find, obsidian, completely round. A bright blue one, slightly flattened and oval, but not so scratched as the green one from earlier. A piece of rose quartz last, rounded at the corners, but not entirely smooth yet. Five very different pieces of rock and stone. Satisfied, she looks to find the red roan twins, to see how they are doing.
It is too much to carry them all in her mouth, the spotted filly contemplates. Just about three would have been easy, but five… she might swallow them. Mesmerizing, the spotted mare looks around. Monster skin and blood, water (not helping), weeds (possibly useful), is that it? No - there is also one bone-armoured mare. ”Maybe you can carry them!” Enthusiastic like only foals can be, because in spirit she is so very much the same as before (nightmares of monsters will only come later), the reddish-spotted girl walks towards her cousin to inspect her armour. ”I mean, if you walk really, really carefully.” she adds in her most serious, but still childish, voice.
But fifteen pebbles is a lot to carry for one, Eurwen thinks to herself. What if they fell? Or swallowed one? Her obsidian pebble is very, very round. It could easily be lost. And it would possibly be very uncomfortable for Brazen. Frowning, she looks from her gathered pebbles to the other, now collected stones, and starts to pace while thinking it through more thoroughly (a habit she did not know she would develop).
Her hoof scrapes through the muddy ground, a bit away from the beach. Mud. Mud! Beaming, she looks to the others. ”Mud!” she says, then rolls around in it to show them what she means. The wet stuff is sticky, and perhaps stinky (dead seaweed does that to coastal mud), but it’s the sticky part she got it for. ”We can stick them to ourselves!” she tells them. Already, some grass, roots and branches have accumulated in her muddy fur, and she presents it to them with a sheepish grin.
Dagen doesn’t seem to like her new image much, which she can understand of course, and she shuffles a hoof. But he proposes a better idea, based off of hers, and her meek smile returns. Nooks in Brazen’s armour. ”I can, uhm, carry a few in my mouth maybe, but not all of them I think. Or if they fall I can pick them up.” she says apologetically. But if Brazen can carry a few more with her armour, or if Dagen can help stick two or three pebbles unto Eurwen’s own spine, then that’d work just as well, she thinks.
And so, their ideas combined, after a while of applying mud, and more mud, and then the pebbles, they start to move. Dagen up front with five pebbles of his own, Brazen carrying most of them, and Eurwen trailing behind, hoping none will fall off her roan cousin’s back, making sure that if any fall off, she will catch them. Or rather, collect them.
Some do fall - and on the mountainous road it is indeed a challenge to find them again. Steep roads, and rocky ones. Sometimes she has to run back to catch a pebble, but be it luck or just her anxiety tilting her vision to an adrenaline-enhanced level of alertness, she manages. They all manage; in the end, the three young souls in large bodies, find their way back to the mountain without the scare that they had had on the way to the beach. Following the water until the Hyaline-Pangea border, the golden-haired girl wonders to herself if it is easier because it is the way back, or because they are adults now. Would everything be easier when she grew up? Less big and scary? She hopes so, but then, she also doesn’t really want to be grown up yet. What would Mama think?
Slow but persistent, they follow the way back to the Mountain. Brazen has gotten more graceful during the trip, she thinks, and perhaps in her hurriedness, the spotted mare hasn’t noticed her own movements had become more comfortable as well. Stinky, she and Brazen finally stand on the mountain, and Eurwen quickly searches the pebbles out of the bone-bearing mare’s armour - presenting all pebbles in small piles to present to the fae.
Let’s just hope that it helped!
Thinking of her family, her shaky stance becomes more trembling, her fears allowed to enter her mind. What if she stays this way? Is she older than Oisín now or did her twin sister grow too, not knowing what happened? And Chryseis? Ears flat on her skull and into the tangled golden mane, it is only the shadows of her cousins nearby that help her realize that this is not a weird dream. This, this is fairy magic, the kind she’d always been warned about. But she has now gained a strength with which she had been able to help the others. The antlered mare that took them all with her, every little foal around gathered to her. The other foals themselves, too. That’s good, yes? Not all bad?
Slowly, she overcomes her shock. Her weirdly-overlong-legs move her towards the other two like a crippled old woman - stiff from the fight, and wobbly; the gait of a foal in an adult body. She’s quite sure they had been foals like her, too. The mare has a trait of bone, stretching over her body like armour, the stallion doesn’t look like he has anything, like Eurwen herself. She recognizes the chestnut roan colouring on them, so similar to her own if she hadn’t had this appaloosa overlay her mother had gifted her with. Roans, like her Papa and Chryseis and her Grammama and a whole lot of aunts and uncles. But to be honest, Eurwen hasn’t yet explored all of her family tree, and has not yet met Heartfire herself, so what would she know.
It’s not important. They have a task!
”Uhm, hi. I’m Eurwen. Let’s uhm, find some pebbles?” Twisting her ears in uncertainty, she looks at the two expectantly. They’ll know what to do, yes? Will they?
She gets the confirmation she needs from the boy-man (oof, he sounds unhappy), Dagen. Five pebbles, yes. The beach is littered with those, she see when she walks over to it - shiny, coloured ones, less shiny and duller ones, but all of them similarly smooth and most of them similar in size, too. Battered by the waves and the salt, they’ve come to rest here. But most of all - most of all these pebbles are one hundred percent plague-free.
The golden-maned filly (in the body of a mare) doesn’t know much of the plague. She only came to see a fairy! Now, she has survived a monster attack, and it depends on the remaining trio to help the fairies. She simply can’t give up now, even if she is quite uncertain how to move her legs without hitting any of the rocks around her. Or how to walk steadily, at all. Dutifully, she collects her selection of rocks. A green, oval one, shiny on the inside but with a scratched outside that makes it harder to see through. A white and still a bit pointy one, shaped like a salt crystal broken off the nearby coast and accidentally having landed here with the smooth ones (perhaps it is, but Eurwen is too busy searching the right stones that she doesn’t stop to think about it too much). The smoothest, gleaming black pebble she can find, obsidian, completely round. A bright blue one, slightly flattened and oval, but not so scratched as the green one from earlier. A piece of rose quartz last, rounded at the corners, but not entirely smooth yet. Five very different pieces of rock and stone. Satisfied, she looks to find the red roan twins, to see how they are doing.
It is too much to carry them all in her mouth, the spotted filly contemplates. Just about three would have been easy, but five… she might swallow them. Mesmerizing, the spotted mare looks around. Monster skin and blood, water (not helping), weeds (possibly useful), is that it? No - there is also one bone-armoured mare. ”Maybe you can carry them!” Enthusiastic like only foals can be, because in spirit she is so very much the same as before (nightmares of monsters will only come later), the reddish-spotted girl walks towards her cousin to inspect her armour. ”I mean, if you walk really, really carefully.” she adds in her most serious, but still childish, voice.
But fifteen pebbles is a lot to carry for one, Eurwen thinks to herself. What if they fell? Or swallowed one? Her obsidian pebble is very, very round. It could easily be lost. And it would possibly be very uncomfortable for Brazen. Frowning, she looks from her gathered pebbles to the other, now collected stones, and starts to pace while thinking it through more thoroughly (a habit she did not know she would develop).
Her hoof scrapes through the muddy ground, a bit away from the beach. Mud. Mud! Beaming, she looks to the others. ”Mud!” she says, then rolls around in it to show them what she means. The wet stuff is sticky, and perhaps stinky (dead seaweed does that to coastal mud), but it’s the sticky part she got it for. ”We can stick them to ourselves!” she tells them. Already, some grass, roots and branches have accumulated in her muddy fur, and she presents it to them with a sheepish grin.
Dagen doesn’t seem to like her new image much, which she can understand of course, and she shuffles a hoof. But he proposes a better idea, based off of hers, and her meek smile returns. Nooks in Brazen’s armour. ”I can, uhm, carry a few in my mouth maybe, but not all of them I think. Or if they fall I can pick them up.” she says apologetically. But if Brazen can carry a few more with her armour, or if Dagen can help stick two or three pebbles unto Eurwen’s own spine, then that’d work just as well, she thinks.
And so, their ideas combined, after a while of applying mud, and more mud, and then the pebbles, they start to move. Dagen up front with five pebbles of his own, Brazen carrying most of them, and Eurwen trailing behind, hoping none will fall off her roan cousin’s back, making sure that if any fall off, she will catch them. Or rather, collect them.
Some do fall - and on the mountainous road it is indeed a challenge to find them again. Steep roads, and rocky ones. Sometimes she has to run back to catch a pebble, but be it luck or just her anxiety tilting her vision to an adrenaline-enhanced level of alertness, she manages. They all manage; in the end, the three young souls in large bodies, find their way back to the mountain without the scare that they had had on the way to the beach. Following the water until the Hyaline-Pangea border, the golden-haired girl wonders to herself if it is easier because it is the way back, or because they are adults now. Would everything be easier when she grew up? Less big and scary? She hopes so, but then, she also doesn’t really want to be grown up yet. What would Mama think?
Slow but persistent, they follow the way back to the Mountain. Brazen has gotten more graceful during the trip, she thinks, and perhaps in her hurriedness, the spotted mare hasn’t noticed her own movements had become more comfortable as well. Stinky, she and Brazen finally stand on the mountain, and Eurwen quickly searches the pebbles out of the bone-bearing mare’s armour - presenting all pebbles in small piles to present to the fae.
Let’s just hope that it helped!
lies the seed that with the sun's love
in the spring becomes the rose
in the spring becomes the rose
@[Dagen] @[Brazen]