[open] when I was a bird I could see

[cressida]

when I was a bird I could see where the moon had turned

Tonight, she does not feel like traveling as a deer. She has spent so many nights as such and though she does not tire of it—not, exactly—she does find that she misses the body her birth. The crooked horn of her father just barely beginning to rise from her youthful forehead. The small wings that tuck over her back, elegantly folded and expectant. She takes pleasure in this form too, although it can feel nearly stocky compared to the more spindly deer, and with the moon beginning to rise once more, just starting to wax, she feels more like herself again too. She feels the joy, the pleasure, once again seeping into her.

She leaves her preferred forest, walking toward the meadow with the moonlight dappling over her slender back. Cressida is so rarely found during the day—and, when she is, it is only at the insistence of her brother. She would gladly weather the heat if it was his own, but when he is off having his own adventures, she does not find any reason to sleep through the hours that were wholly her own.

Her pale golden hooves flash as she moves through the spring flowers and swaying grass, the black beginning to recede from her coat with the wave of silver washing up her legs. Soon, she would be once again fully silver—fully herself. Instead, she only has the remnants of it. A tease of what is to come.

Smiling, she glances up to see that she is in the center of the meadow.

She twists her head around and finds no-one around.

A gentle shrug as she closes her eyes and tips her head back.

Calls the thin moonlight down until the meadow is nearly daylight with the silvery light.

the sky was alive and this wire of mine burned