Ichor
it came from somewhere in the stars
Ichor followed like the good little moth-pony that she is.
Followed him to the home that he had talked so sparingly but lovingly of. It left her curious to see the land and the moment she had set hoof to it, she’d felt oddly at home. The hillocks were fun to amble over and she could find large patches of shade to shield her sensitive compound eyes from the cruelties of the sun as it beat down on her. She liked to stand there and let the sun warm her back with her eyes squeezed shut against the sunlight and fill it saturating her scaly (so tiny and hairy that they hardly resembled true scales) champagne skin until she napped good and long to the point that one might consider Ichor a lazy beast.
Best of all, the flowers! Since she is more moth than horse with a bit of lamprey thrown in there for scandalous effect, she did not ingest grass like her fellow herbivores. She craved nectar and her long nectar-seeking proboscis often unfurled itself from between her lips and guided her from flower to flower, sampling their tastes. To a moth-monster like her, this was ass close to heaven as she was going to get on earth. The scientific and common names of flowers flooded her brain, making the synapses fire faster and faster until she’d drunk her fill and drunk on nectar, she’d go find a dark nook beneath one of the hills and let dreams carry her off on an uneventful tide of sleep.
Ichor is buried up to her antennae in a cluster of bluebells. Hyacinthoides non-scripta, she thinks, as she slurps the nectar up and muses over her good fortune at finding this particular treat so far from it’s typical woodland habitat. Somehow it grew and thrived near a patch of stunted pines that had pushed themselves up from the dirt of nothing to become small but persistent in facing the fact that even the pines should not grow here on such rough hills as these.
Such a tasty treat!
She is filling her stomach on the bluebell nectar when she hears his whinnying call for her carry across the hills. Ichor lifts her head and folds her tongue back up into her mouth as she considers for a moment - just a short, sweet moment - ignoring him and sucking the nectar out of that entire cluster of bluebells. Desire to answer him wins out against her greed and her gut. So the moth-mare moves in the direction of his voice, discovering that he’d not been that far from her the entire time but also, that he is not alone. This is a first, since Ichor does not dwell much in the vast company of others besides herself, Ivar, or moths and flowers.
Her big compound eyes bring the mare into focus and Ichor offers a somewhat shy smile to her. She is inept at conversation and surprised that Ivar had bothered to summon her, to which she throws him a questioning look or as much of one as Ichor can muster given her not entirely equine facial features. There is the slightest shiver of her atlas moth wings in agitation but something about his presence keeps her anchored there instead of turning around and finding another patch of flowers to invest her time and tongue in. Instead, she figures she must mind her manners and say something so Ichor offers up a simple and understated “Hello.”