feel the heart underneath my skin; dara/sam-pony

[keeper]

the universe seems cramped to you and me

The Forest has her secrets;
Keeper has more of them.

Her dark eyes (family eyes, like two bright blackberries) shine out of her face as she looks towards the interlocking branches overhead; it is dark here, she thinks, not surprised that few strands of sunshine come slanting down through the trees. They stand too close, too thick, in their union between earth and sky - each one an atlas bearing the weight of the clouds upon his back. She decides that she likes it here; there is more quiet, a ceremonial hush. Yes, she thinks, she does like it here.

There is a sense of aloneness in the Forest, but not - things creep and crawl, slither and slide, and she smells their scat, and all the stories they’ve left behind. Her eyes track a beetle in his crawl across the bark of a downed tree, probably lightning struck. His pace is slow and measured, his back shiny green and black (almost like sister, like Ceremony, she thinks) and her eyes follow him until the bark swallows the beetle up. He has gone and she cannot follow, too large to fit inside that small darkness in which the bug has gone; more things creep and crawl, slither and slide, and she can hear them in all the Forest’s darkness.

Keeper has spent an entire afternoon there, in the cool dark of the trees. She thinks that maybe, it is time to see if the moon has risen. Her step is cushioned by all the stuff underfoot: fern, leaf, and moss; the hush moves with her, surrounds her like a cloak until the Forest spits her out into a clearing with the tiniest protest of one little twig that cracks underfoot, loud and explosive in the nearing night. Keeper almost laughs, she had not meant to disturb the peace of the place, it just happened accidentally - like the mare nearby that turns her head to look, not much older than Keeper is herself and she throws a smile the mare’s way. “Sorry.”

KEEPER

[Dara]

Wolves in our own skin, we're savages. We act so primitive.

I figured now that my little sisters are finally here I’d be way too busy wrapped up in them to get any good wandering or troublemaking in. Well that was true enough for a while, but they’re nearly six months old now and need less supervision (which our dads have covered anyhow) and more freedom to get into their own trouble. Plus, keeping an eye on them has Dad and Papa distracted enough that I’m able to slip through the cracks a little easier, and sneak off without my usual bodyguard.

Ah, the perks of having feisty little sisters.

It’s easy to take advantage of the distraction they provide and slip past the boundaries of Echo Trails, and from there I wander west. I bypass the playground and the adoption den, too old for one and far too young to wander into the other and risk bringing home a stray when we’ve already got three little lovelies running around terrorizing our dads and making life wonderful.

I carry on until I hit forest again, and as soon as I do it’s like being wrapped up in a homey, silvan embrace. The rich smell of earth, cool shade on my skin, familiar birdsong and the quiet rustling of the stray squirrel, it’s like being home in the forests of my childhood. My eyes drift closed and I just breathe it in, a happy little smile on my lips. Peace, quiet, and--

A twig snaps nearby, and I jerk my head toward the unexpected sound. Oh, wow, how’d I miss her? Pretty, a good bit shorter than me but not dainty or adorable, more...quiet, sure-footed strength, maybe. Golden skin framed in a dark shade hard to distinguish in the shade, something brown or black but lovely either way.

“That’s alright,” I say, waving off her apology with a little toss of my head and a friendly smile. “I’m glad you did it, or I might not have seen you there, and that would’ve been a shame. I’m Dara, from Echo Trails. Who’re you?”

Do the rain dance like you're on fire.

[keeper]

throw me to the wolves & i will return leading the pack.

Keeper is the last in the Mandan-brood; for now.

She is unaware that her father has sowed his seed again this season; she thought him entirely too sad, too lonely, and she loved him but could not stand to be so near to him. He tried though, to keep the bitterness from his face when they were around but it shadowed his every look or word. It hurt her very heart but he refused to cure himself of this illness, stewing in his misery rather than conquering it and it was this that eventually drove Keeper away.

(She misses the shelter of Yellowstone’s wings; she often ran and hid beneath one of them, tucked up against his pale yellow-and-white side. The feathers of his wings fluttered and spoke of birds and flight until she dreamed of soaring the skies herself, but she never envied his ability to do so as she could not.)

(She even missed Ceremony bossing her around, all green and black like a beetle’s back, and large like their father - like Keeper was not, small but hardy, despite her ordinariness that kept her apart from all of them - the entire family, except for aunt Americus…)

Keeper hardly thinks of them now; she listens to the howl of wolves as they try to sing down the light of the moon each night. She looks for the liquid shine of animal eyes in the shadows - be it squirrel or deer, preferrably the latter, as she trails them time after time, her own eyes similiar in their shine, wild and dark. Her eyes now cannot look away from the mare; it is the roaned black of her shot through with silver, like granite, she muses to herself. Granite beneath moonlight, or water, all lovely and veined; Keeper wants to say as much but the mare is speaking and her ears crane forward to hear her.

“Why would that have been a shame?” she asks, curious as to why Dara attributes an importance to her already - she’s just Keeper, nothing and no one special, just herself and she nearly says so but decides to continue the introductions to one another. “I’m Keeper, from nowhere and now here.” and she knows it almost makes no sense to be from nowhere but somehow here - it just is, and for now, she’ll have it no other way because the Forest is fast becoming home to her and she cannot imagine being somewhere that has no trees to block out the sky.

Keeper likes to hide, like a secret - like a thing that should not be.

Keeper

[Dara]

Wolves in our own skin, we're savages. We act so primitive.

“Why would that have been a shame?”

A grin slowly spreads across my face at the question, and I’m beginning to suspect I might be the more extraverted of the two of us. I’d rather be talking to someone than spending time alone just about any day. “It’s nice to meet you, Keeper, from nowhere and now here--which is an excellent choice in places to be from, by the way. And it would have been a shame to be standing around by myself in a forest missing out on talking to someone other than my family. Mind you, I love talking to my family. But it’s nice to get out and meet new people sometimes, you know?”

I’ve spent the last six months surrounded by adorable baby sisters, watched over by not only my overprotective dads, but my grandma and my aunt and uncle, and even my younger cousin as well. Tycho seems to have decided that since I’m unattached and female and not a powerhouse like our grandmother or his father, it therefore falls to him to help protect me from the big, scary world.

It’s actually kind of cute. Aside from being just a little bit infuriating, that is.

Still, infuriating or no, I suppose it’s a good sign. He’s starting to feel connected, feel like a part of the whole family instead of just his little one. So I suppose having one more person watching over me a little too closely isn’t so terrible. “Do you have family about too, Keeper?”

Do the rain dance like you're on fire.

(Ugh, sorry it's short.)