By no means does she claim to know every horse that calls Tephra home, but she is certain she does not know the winged boy who landed in their meadow a short while ago. Nor does she know why she stayed to watch him graze. Despite her lineage, she has never much cared for meeting those who enter the kingdom - has certainly never cared for making friends. But this boy seems almost familiar somehow, like she knows him. Knows of him? It is so hard to be sure though, so hard with all the thoughts that swirl rampant in the dark turmoil of her mind.
There are so many things clamoring for her attention now. Worrying about her father and the way his lips seemed stained in crimson now, the way their grotto stinks of death and copper so bad she can hardly enter without feeling her stomach churn. Worrying about her mother who has never left his side, about what will happen if she has to. If they all have to. She flinches at that, eyes closed and face turned into the wind as though it will force these thoughts away from her. She should go somewhere, do something, help if she can (even though she knows she can’t). Should find a better way to force her mind quiet, to find blissful numbness.
Still, she stays.
She is guardedly curious now - though, she won’t admit it. Wonders why no one has come to greet him, why he has not moved on from her meadow. So she watches from her perch halfway up the volcano, standing on rock worn smooth by her hooves waiting for something, anything to happen.
But nothing does.
So she unfurls her wings, large and pale and impossibly soft, waits until she can feel the wind shifting between each feather with the cold caress of winter. Waits a little longer as a quiet hesitation builds in her chest and fills her feet with stone. Why does she care who he is? But she does. Feels herself leaning into that gentle curiosity because it hurts less than the blades her world is full of. On the next breath of wind, she is gone, diving from her stone with all the grace of a falling star until at the last second her wings snap wide and open and keep the green of Tephra safely beneath her.
She is silent when she lands nearby, pausing long enough to catch his gaze if he looks up. But then she half-grins, something soft and secret and meant just for herself, and drops her own head to the grass to pull at the short green grass. I can be mysterious, too. She thinks, that ghost of a smile still caught on the curve of dark lips.
marble