I'm in love with your honor - any.

[Vineine]

***Her sense of smell is keen. Through the scent of fallen leaves and drying plants—earthy, and ever so slightly bitter—she follows it. Feline. Sleek and warm; floral and sweet. Foreign, but it speaks of home. It reminds her of things that time had naturally regressed: a small, pink, damp babe at the foot of a smiling woman, out of breath and glad for it. Too long ago. A mind too simply formed, not yet ready to consume and process the deluge of stimuli. The caw of a vibrant parrot, the soft slink of a constrictor—the immense world of the understory. ***When that scent runs cold, another takes its place. Familiar, but only slightly. Not nearly as much as she wishes it was. Only because she has just tested it, at once suddenly so close and providing. Now weaving like breadcrumbs through the meadowgrasses and wild roses. Guiding her, even in absence. Pulling her with some invisible string to the place where she belongs. ***Or so it always seemed to her. A logical conclusion, one written long before she was ever birthed onto that dark floor. ***She had her doubts. Always there. It is why she hadn't come sooner. Why she had settled elsewhere to raise two children and blossom. Because the inevitability of it scared her, and because it was so incongruous with the way she understood nature to work. Nothing is forever, nothing is inevitable but death—and not even that. Not here. Not equally. So she had let it go, to grow or die in her breast as it would. But it had not died. It smolders like a star, and she is following its constellations. Guiding her. ***All she knows, and she knows it all well, begins to thin out. Replaced by fan leaves and giant trees; white orchids and bright red passion flowers. She stops to look at these things, the quiet observation abating the nervous churn in her gut. A black and yellow beetle; various butterflies; and a vivid red and teal tail father nestled on the ground. ***Her golden brown eyes move methodically. Wholly taken by her inspection, she does not notice the increase in hoof traffic. The padded dwon floor. The stronger equine scent. The epicenter, because this entire place was too wild for them to have it all. She stops, looking around anxiously. She feels small, it is a comfort. *magic-borne daughter of Prague and Elladora ****‘...Herself in the Heavens, her beam on the waves.’