[open] i've been waiting for you;

[Ashr]

it was all a dream...

She slips through worlds (drifts, really, in and out of consciousness for a while), crawls through the blackness that separates galaxies from dreams and tries to find her way back home; but home is gone, home does not exist. Has never existed. It was a pretty lie her mother liked to tell. They had been on the run for months, though the beast was always making headway—always one step closer than he was the day before. He huffed and puffed smoke, that great lizard, who could spit fire hot enough to melt the flesh from their bones; “he’s just toying with us,” her grandmother said, and it wouldn’t be long before he came after the whole lot of them.

He took the children first.

All of them.

He would have taken her, too, if Uncle had let him. But Uncle was brave. And brave men, though their actions will be remembered forever, do not last long in a place like this.

Ashr leans against him and relishes in the warm, snuggles her face against his side and pretends that he’s one of the many she has lost to the frigid tide; if she’s really lost them, that is. Maybe they lost her. Maybe they’re out there, somewhere, calling out her name from the depths with fins and frills and fun fish-tails. Her mother liked to talk about water horses, too. And so waterhorses they became, untouchable by fire. Yes. That must be it. She blinks open her bright hazel eyes, then casts a sidelong glance at the stallion that has come to her aid; he’s one of the biggest, fuzziest horses she has ever seen in her life.

“You look like a bear, mister...” she remarks dryly, unable to raise her voice above a raspy whisper.

Another body, more warmth.

She nuzzles into this body, too.

It smells sweeter, feels softer; she lips at the gray patches of hair curiously.

How peculiar.

She’s never seen a gray horse before.

“I dunno how I got here,” she sniffles, partly because of the cold and partly because fresh tears are sneaking their way down her cheeks. “She told me to run.”