10-17-2019, 09:06 PM
She's running, for a moment, racing across the white sand, palm trees overhead and the sunlight flashing through them from a sky as bright as a bluebird's wing, running with a strange creature with antlers and claws and cloven hooves. The sun is warm on her back, still muddy and singed and a bit sore where lava hit skin instead of mud. Sweat stings on her flanks, but they keep running, escaping from the army of creatures behind them, outpacing them at last. The sick of fear is fading, bleeding from her belly with every stride put between them, and then, in an instant, in a snap, she is back in familiar territory. The mediterranean landscape disappears midstride and her feet hit gravel roughly, abruptly, stopping so short that she trips and crumples, rolling forward and into the shallows of a river.
Of the river.
The yearling is still for a long moment but for the fast rise and fall of her ribs, the flare of dark nostrils, exposing the wet skin within that glistens red and bright with her run. The river water in the pool she has come to lie in is warm with the late-season sun. As her breathing slows, Popinjay shuts her eyes, the muscles of her legs are pounding, and in the absence of the drumbeats of her own hooves, a hum croons in her ears, flavoring the sound of birdsong and rushing river-water with its own off-pitch tone.
At last, she sighs heavily and lifts her head from its pillow on the pebbles worn smooth by centuries rolling through the river. She bites at a damp flank, causing the last bit of flaking mud to fall away and drift to the bottom of the pool. The sweat has washed away, only the small burns remain, splashed messily up her left haunch and across her back. They itch, healing already, somehow, through whatever magic pitched her back to her home, but when her teeth rake across them, white pain flashes across her vision. She leaps to her feet with a gasp and a squeal, throwing water and rocks in all directions. That is when her eyes finally fall on Aquaria, and the pale mare is so unlike anything Popinjay has seen before that for a moment she wonders if her journey has ended. One ear turns slowly back, then forward again sharply.
"Hey!" she shouts abruptly, "Hey, you don't have any riddles that need solving, do you?"
@[Aquaria]
Of the river.
The yearling is still for a long moment but for the fast rise and fall of her ribs, the flare of dark nostrils, exposing the wet skin within that glistens red and bright with her run. The river water in the pool she has come to lie in is warm with the late-season sun. As her breathing slows, Popinjay shuts her eyes, the muscles of her legs are pounding, and in the absence of the drumbeats of her own hooves, a hum croons in her ears, flavoring the sound of birdsong and rushing river-water with its own off-pitch tone.
At last, she sighs heavily and lifts her head from its pillow on the pebbles worn smooth by centuries rolling through the river. She bites at a damp flank, causing the last bit of flaking mud to fall away and drift to the bottom of the pool. The sweat has washed away, only the small burns remain, splashed messily up her left haunch and across her back. They itch, healing already, somehow, through whatever magic pitched her back to her home, but when her teeth rake across them, white pain flashes across her vision. She leaps to her feet with a gasp and a squeal, throwing water and rocks in all directions. That is when her eyes finally fall on Aquaria, and the pale mare is so unlike anything Popinjay has seen before that for a moment she wonders if her journey has ended. One ear turns slowly back, then forward again sharply.
"Hey!" she shouts abruptly, "Hey, you don't have any riddles that need solving, do you?"
@[Aquaria]
