09-04-2018, 09:43 PM
Once, when she was little more than a child, Kellyn answered a strange summons to stand beside her grandfather, and he sent her into nowhere in space and time to find his lover.
Perhaps the smudge of dirt can’t find Kellyn today. Perhaps, it feels like this littlest of the sisters is the only one not touched by Kellyn’s time in the quest. Perhaps, it’s random. Though very few things are truly random.
Whatever the reason, Noah is frolicking through the meadow by herself, having lost her overprotective father somewhere behind her speaking to a mare that she doesn’t know but he certainly seems to. He, like her mother, would caution her against heeding the calls of anything or anyone she can’t see and touch herself. Rhonen had learned his lesson as well as Kellyn had.
But, neither of them is present. And it’s not exactly a siren song summoning the filly to the sea. Something sharp hits her, and she swings around with a yelp, trying to see it. Her first thought is ‘bees’, though of course it’s the dead of winter and there are probably no bees. She can feel it moving, uncomfortable, but starts to shrug it off and move on. It’s only then that she starts to have trouble breathing, and strangely only moving in one direction seems to soothe it at all.
So, the girl stumbles along until her path converges with another traveler, and another; she stands amongst them light-headed and disoriented, with the water stretching out in front of her and the gray stallion waiting there. It is hard to focus on his words, but she listens, gasping quietly for desperate breaths. Her heart is pounding beneath her chest, and she doesn’t think about how worried her father must be yet – she simply thinks about this thing he wants them to find, and about breathing, and about how it hurts when he cuts them <i>again</i>.
As soon as the man steps aside – her great-grandfather, though she has no idea – the filly rushes into the surf, breathing blessedly deep for the first time in what feels like hours when the water closes over her head. It should feel terrible, drowning is awful after all, but instead it feels like taking the first deep breath of fresh air after being underwater for too long. She is glad of her feathered wings because they quickly take on water, allowing her to sink and follow the bottom of the ocean. Distractedly she stops to admire some brightly colored fish, reaching for them with her tiny nose, but out of the corner of her eye she sees a tiger (a tiger!) swim by and other horses, and remembers the task she’s been given.
A concerted effort of moving wings and legs moves her through the water, though it is incredibly tedious, and she begins to grow grumpy, bored, and weary when at last she finds the island on the bottom of the ocean and collapses onto the underwater shore, just wanting a nap.
Perhaps the smudge of dirt can’t find Kellyn today. Perhaps, it feels like this littlest of the sisters is the only one not touched by Kellyn’s time in the quest. Perhaps, it’s random. Though very few things are truly random.
Whatever the reason, Noah is frolicking through the meadow by herself, having lost her overprotective father somewhere behind her speaking to a mare that she doesn’t know but he certainly seems to. He, like her mother, would caution her against heeding the calls of anything or anyone she can’t see and touch herself. Rhonen had learned his lesson as well as Kellyn had.
But, neither of them is present. And it’s not exactly a siren song summoning the filly to the sea. Something sharp hits her, and she swings around with a yelp, trying to see it. Her first thought is ‘bees’, though of course it’s the dead of winter and there are probably no bees. She can feel it moving, uncomfortable, but starts to shrug it off and move on. It’s only then that she starts to have trouble breathing, and strangely only moving in one direction seems to soothe it at all.
So, the girl stumbles along until her path converges with another traveler, and another; she stands amongst them light-headed and disoriented, with the water stretching out in front of her and the gray stallion waiting there. It is hard to focus on his words, but she listens, gasping quietly for desperate breaths. Her heart is pounding beneath her chest, and she doesn’t think about how worried her father must be yet – she simply thinks about this thing he wants them to find, and about breathing, and about how it hurts when he cuts them <i>again</i>.
As soon as the man steps aside – her great-grandfather, though she has no idea – the filly rushes into the surf, breathing blessedly deep for the first time in what feels like hours when the water closes over her head. It should feel terrible, drowning is awful after all, but instead it feels like taking the first deep breath of fresh air after being underwater for too long. She is glad of her feathered wings because they quickly take on water, allowing her to sink and follow the bottom of the ocean. Distractedly she stops to admire some brightly colored fish, reaching for them with her tiny nose, but out of the corner of her eye she sees a tiger (a tiger!) swim by and other horses, and remembers the task she’s been given.
A concerted effort of moving wings and legs moves her through the water, though it is incredibly tedious, and she begins to grow grumpy, bored, and weary when at last she finds the island on the bottom of the ocean and collapses onto the underwater shore, just wanting a nap.