09-24-2017, 08:28 PM
She has never been afraid of anything.
Her life has been full of light and love, brimming with laughter and learning. Her family has been a shield against the horrors she’s only heard of, terrors that she had met only secondhand in the stories of her father. Radiant has faced no worse than that same family dissolving before her. Even that, however, is not terrible, not fatal. Time has simply pulled them apart so that they can play the roles they are meant to. She is still tethered to their love, still feels it puppeteering her feet and protecting her heart. She has been far luckier than most.
The mistress that is Beqanna is not always a kind lady, after all. The years since the Reckoning – since her birth, even – have been plagued by turmoil and strife. Newborn lands still wet behind the ears have been dragged to early graves under the ceaseless, churning sea. New tribes and kingdoms have disbanded as the earth and politics collapsed underneath them. There is a giant looming over all of them, watching, a mountain so great it eclipses the sun. From it, tales of mystery and magic roll thick like a mist into the places below.
Radiant is spared all of it but the stories, and she’s never been afraid of those.
So she does not startle at the cracks and clatters of the new forest she walks. She’s never known monsters real or imagined, so every snapping twig draws her in rather than away. Besides, the red girl has always wanted to see everything she can, to learn about all the creatures that call their world home. Be it fox or bear or wolf (or more likely, a harmless squirrel or harried hare) she is eager to meet it head on. What she does not expect to find (at least not this deep in the autumnal woods) is another horse.
Or at least, she thinks it is a horse peering from the deep shadows. His brown eyes are the only parts that stick out, like beetles scurrying on coal. It’s perhaps the oddest sight she’s ever seen, as if the shade of the trees is wrapped around his shoulders like a cloak. Intrigue and discovery (and a small hope of seeing the boy who saved the butterfly) are the reasons she set off on her own in the first place, leaving Tephra firmly behind her. This disappearing (reappearing?) colt fits the bill.
“Yes? I mean, hello, yes.” Her amber eyes are luminous and warm and wide as she assesses the other. She was taught to be polite and worry about herself (the latter, she struggled with). But she has to say, his situation concerns her. The roan woman cranes her head this way and that, looking over every part of him she can see. “Um, are you ok? The shadows seem to be swallowing you. The only reason I ask is that I’ve never heard of that happening. To anyone. Ever. And believe me, I’ve heard some strange stories. If you knew my dad…”
Her life has been full of light and love, brimming with laughter and learning. Her family has been a shield against the horrors she’s only heard of, terrors that she had met only secondhand in the stories of her father. Radiant has faced no worse than that same family dissolving before her. Even that, however, is not terrible, not fatal. Time has simply pulled them apart so that they can play the roles they are meant to. She is still tethered to their love, still feels it puppeteering her feet and protecting her heart. She has been far luckier than most.
The mistress that is Beqanna is not always a kind lady, after all. The years since the Reckoning – since her birth, even – have been plagued by turmoil and strife. Newborn lands still wet behind the ears have been dragged to early graves under the ceaseless, churning sea. New tribes and kingdoms have disbanded as the earth and politics collapsed underneath them. There is a giant looming over all of them, watching, a mountain so great it eclipses the sun. From it, tales of mystery and magic roll thick like a mist into the places below.
Radiant is spared all of it but the stories, and she’s never been afraid of those.
So she does not startle at the cracks and clatters of the new forest she walks. She’s never known monsters real or imagined, so every snapping twig draws her in rather than away. Besides, the red girl has always wanted to see everything she can, to learn about all the creatures that call their world home. Be it fox or bear or wolf (or more likely, a harmless squirrel or harried hare) she is eager to meet it head on. What she does not expect to find (at least not this deep in the autumnal woods) is another horse.
Or at least, she thinks it is a horse peering from the deep shadows. His brown eyes are the only parts that stick out, like beetles scurrying on coal. It’s perhaps the oddest sight she’s ever seen, as if the shade of the trees is wrapped around his shoulders like a cloak. Intrigue and discovery (and a small hope of seeing the boy who saved the butterfly) are the reasons she set off on her own in the first place, leaving Tephra firmly behind her. This disappearing (reappearing?) colt fits the bill.
“Yes? I mean, hello, yes.” Her amber eyes are luminous and warm and wide as she assesses the other. She was taught to be polite and worry about herself (the latter, she struggled with). But she has to say, his situation concerns her. The roan woman cranes her head this way and that, looking over every part of him she can see. “Um, are you ok? The shadows seem to be swallowing you. The only reason I ask is that I’ve never heard of that happening. To anyone. Ever. And believe me, I’ve heard some strange stories. If you knew my dad…”