that's all there is
As much as she wants to get to know the land – and she has, loving every moment of winter turning to summer; every new bloom inspected and catalogued in her mind as moments of quiet brilliant joy – she knows she must also know the people. While Wolfbane is to leave her to abide here when he returns to his Kingdom, Noah knows others will stay. And even those who return to Loess will be close allies, even friends. So she emerges from the wildflowers one day and is creeping quietly along with wonder in her eyes when a streak of light-colored creature goes racing past, and the little red mare recognizes the rushing form of Lepis.
For a moment, her heart jumps into her throat, and worry into her eyes. For where can the mare be off to in such a rush? What danger is she fleeing? Noah seeks around her in wide-eyed fear, looking for the source of the danger, but she sees nothing and no one. No one else is fleeing an unseen threat, no raised voices, or strange smells. Every one of her senses says there is no danger, and slowly her fear begins to recede into curiosity. She follows the path the other mare has taken easily through the meadow, though she can’t help but reach out to the wilting and crushed flowers underfoot and coax them back to life in her wake. Sometimes she imagines she can feel their pain, and she refuses to walk amongst the plantlife without restoring some health to those crushed under her own feet.
It is no harder to track Lepis on the sandy shore, where her hooves leave deep imprints, but she doesn’t have to track her. She can see her, standing at the edge of the water, but something else drifts across her consciousness before she can move forward to speak. This is the scent of a predator, but one she has crossed paths with before in her wanderings across the Pampas; wolf. Her eyes lock on the black canine and she’s jumping forward, voice lifting to warn Lepis, when there is no longer a wolf, but in its place, a blue horse.
”Lepis!” the warning had already escaped but it is cut off, strangled and strange as she stumbles over her own leap, her instinct to run forward and protect, and it takes her a moment and a flare of her red-brown wings to steady herself, and then she is turns a shy and apologetic glance to Lepis, and to the girl. “Sorry, I,” she hesitates, looks between them. “I only saw you as a wolf, at first, and I suppose I’m a little jumpy and on edge.”
noah
