[open] Chaos and Whimsy; any

[Tipitina]

It had been a perfectly ordinary day in the meadow. The kind of day that asked nothing of anyone: soft light, easy quiet, the small green flames of Tipsy's foxfire drifting their usual lazy circles around her as she moved, casting idle flickers across the black and white patches of her coat. She was mid-step, going nowhere in particular, thinking nothing of consequence.

Then her nose twitched.

She stopped instantly. One elongated ear swiveled forward. The other flattened back. Her moth-like antennae trembled with a very specific kind of warning, the kind that came not from anything outside her, but from something building quietly within. The foxfire stilled. Even they seemed to know. No. No, no, no. The tickle sharpened, crawling up the bridge of her nose with the particular cruelty of something that could not be argued with. Her neon-streaked mane gave a faint, involuntary glow. The water lilies blooming from her chest flickered. Her butterfly wings, bright neon and entirely uncooperative, gave one sharp flutter and shed a fine sprinkle of glowing dust into the air around her. Don't. Don't do this right now. Her face scrunched. Her whole body tensed. The foxfire scattered."AAACHOO!"

Poof!

The magic didn't wait for permission. Neon green and gold erupted from her all at once, a full-body detonation of fairy dust that swallowed her whole, pouring from her wings, her mane, the brand on her shoulder, the lilies at her chest, every inch of her blazing briefly like something newly born. The world didn't fade. It snapped, colors folding inward, air bending at angles that had no business existing, the meadow she'd been standing in peeling away mid-breath. In less than a second, there was nothing. And then Silence.

Tipsy dropped onto soft ground with a light, graceless thud, hooves sinking slightly into thick grass. The last of the fairy dust drifted off her in slow, dissipating spirals. The foxfire, scattered to nothing a moment ago, began reassembling itself around her one small flame at a time, drifting back into orbit as if returning from a brief personal errand, unbothered. "...Ow," she groaned.

She stayed still for a moment, blinking once, twice, letting her grey eyes adjust, and her antennae settle. Then she looked up. The grass beneath her hooves was thick and impossibly green, rolling outward into gentle hills scattered with wildflowers in every color she could name and several she couldn't. A breeze moved through it all, soft and unhurried, carrying the scent of something warm and floral and faintly sweet, the kind of spring air that felt less like weather and more like a decision someone had made on her behalf.

Tipsy rose slowly and turned in a full circle, ears moving, antennae tasting the air, foxfire resuming its idle float around her shoulders as though nothing had happened at all. "...Okay." She expels, squinting at the horizon. Rolling hills. Wildflowers. A lavender field in the distance, deep and violet, stretching toward something large and old at its center, a tree, she thought, though tree felt like an insufficient word for something that seemed to take up that much of the sky. The horizon did not explain itself. It offered nothing. It simply was, serene and unhelpfully beautiful. She stared at it for a long moment.

"...Where am I." Not quite a question. Not quite not one either. She said it the way someone says a thing they already suspect the answer to, flat and careful, buying time while the rest of her caught up. A foxfire flame drifted forward ahead of her toward the lavender, slow and curious. She watched it go and did not call it back.

[Aera]

Her morning was calm as she grazed peacefully amongst the fragrant lavender that dotted the meadowlands of the Gates. Though she was a century and twenty years old, she still looked to he in her prime, with a face un-marred by age and a body full of vitality. Aera's mind was still, a state of peaceful quiet in this warm oasis, until her interest was piqued by a fast moving flame that whizzed just ahead of her. She raised her head, stilling mid chew with a few tendrils of grass sticking out of the corner of her mouth, and slowly looked toward the direction it came from. Upon the sloping hillside, a peculiar form stood with antennae and wing so delicate she thought she could see the soft light of morning glowing through them. Aera moved from her spot within the lavender and strode with curious confidence and whinnied softly in the newcomers direction.

“A beautiful morning is it not?”, Aera cooed in welcoming voice. She was fond of conversing with others, she was a creature who thrived on learning the stories of others and she had learned many in her long life and yearned for more in her eternity to come. “I am Aera, so good to meet you. Is this your first time in the Gates?”, she asked. She knew when she first came here that it was a dream come true, a warm paradise of greenery that she only thought existed in her dreams. As she awaited a reply, her eyes noted the bright colors in the mare's mane, how truly delicate the wings, and how absolutely interesting the antennae were that sprouted from her head were. She wondered if wings like that could handle flight, she ruffled her own strong feathered wings as she pondered what it would be like to try flying with wings as delicate as a butterfly's. Would it be unstable? Would she need to flutter them constantly to hold her weight? Or could she soar like on her own wings?

a e r a

would you break even my wings like a swallow?

@leaner

[Tipitina]

The voice arrived before Tipsy had finished deciding whether she was upright, and she startled hard enough that two of her foxfire flames swerved wide and had to correct themselves mid-orbit, looking, if flames could look like anything, mildly embarrassed on her behalf.

The mare standing in the lavender was, in a word, composed. Feathered wings. Clear eyes. The unhurried bearing of someone who had never once been flung sideways through reality by her own sinuses. Tipsy became abruptly aware of the fairy dust still settling out of her mane, of the grass stain forming on one white shoulder, of the fact that her greeting to this land had technically been Ow.

"Beautiful," she agreed, a half beat too late. Her voice came out rougher than she wanted. She cleared it. "Yeah... It's... Yeah." Her antennae swept forward, tasting the air between them, and found nothing sharp in it. No warning. Just lavender and warmth and this stranger's easy curiosity, which was somehow more disarming than a threat would have been.

"I'm Tipsy," she offered. One elongated ear tipped toward the mare, the other still angled back toward the horizon, unwilling to fully commit. "And it's my first time, technically. Though I want to be clear that I didn't come here so much as I was expelled into it." She lifted her chin slightly, mustering what dignity remained. "I sneezed." She let that sit. "I'm aware of how that sounds. I sneezed, and the magic took it as a suggestion, and now I'm standing in your lavender." As if in confirmation, the water lilies at her chest pulsed once, soft and gold-green, then dimmed like something falling back asleep. Her wings gave a small involuntary flutter, shedding a last thin drift of dust that caught the morning light and hung there, glittering, refusing to be dignified. Tipsy watched a single grain land on a lavender stalk and thought, stop helping.

She looked back at Aera. The older mare hadn't flinched at any of it, which said something. "The Gates," she repeated, testing the shape of it in her mouth. "Well. That's a first. I've never heard of it." Her gaze moved past Aera, out across the impossible violet of the field. "But I guess I'm seeing it." She turned her head toward the deep stretch of lavender, toward the vast old shape at its heart, the thing that had been sitting at the edge of her attention since she'd stood up and that she had been very deliberately not looking at directly. Her foxfire had already made its choice. The one flame that had drifted ahead of her earlier was still out there, small and green and unbothered, floating patiently in the direction of the tree like it was waiting for her to catch up.

"I'd like to know what that is," she said, nodding toward it, "because I've been calling it a tree in my head for about four minutes now and I'm losing confidence in the word."

@ Aera