[open] that's my cross to bear

[Eyas]

I've got you deep in the heart of me

-So deep in my heart that you're really a part of me-

Sinking her black hooves into Elio’s tracks, Eyas meandered quietly through the snow and made her way toward the willow tree. The few inches of white powder that had accumulated earlier now lay quietly across the meadow of dead grass, undisturbed aside from the hollow pockets where Elio had first walked and which Eyas now used to keep herself from being followed. Her smaller black legs fit neatly into the larger, rounder hoof marks stamped out by her younger sibling - he was a buff stallion, like their mutual brother Gale - and she trod easily over the icy turf. Eyas still remembered how grown-up Elio had looked when she’d met him in Loess, all golden red, and how she’d marveled at his similarity to Wolfbane.

Now it was the new year, and she knew better than to equate her father to her brother. They were nothing alike; Elio never could be and never would be Wolfbane. He’d only gotten the best and least from their father in terms of physical beauty, and that wasn’t something Eyas could fault him for.

In fact, as she murmured out, “Elio?” And slipped her sooty nose between the hanging limbs, Eyas was nervously excited to see those self-same gold stripes and Elio’s signature red-marked coat. Her nostrils bumped against something - feathers from his wing? - and Eyas withdrew, taking a step backwards. She shook her own svelte wings free from the cold and waited, breathing plumes of icy smoke into the air while the sun faded away into dusk.

EYAS

@[elio] <3