[open] you had your maps drawn

[aletta]

He is a throwback to her youth. Aletta hadn’t been so naive to think that every traveler she would encounter would be friendly but the way he smiles reminds her of the times (and travels) when a stranger was more apt to grin than growl. The reply he gives her echoes something she might have once said.

Aletta had never minded the solitude. If anything, she had learned to appreciate the silence. What a horse couldn’t find in conversation, they might find in nature. There were things that might be missed when otherwise occupied with amiable conversation; morning dew that caught fire with the dawn in spring, frost as it painted the landscape in the air in fall. The enchantment of waterfalls as they sang their cascading song, lovely as any siren. Imperial mountains who refused to budge, who refused to erode against the face of time.

The winged stallion has no qualms where they might end up and Aletta knows she’s found another wayward spirit like herself. Even without wings, the gray mare had been the soaring type. That had always been the thrill for her. Another turn, another trail, another corner - what might be on the other side?

Despite some of the consequences, she has always enjoyed the finding out.

"Where did you come from?” she asks, turning her head towards his briefly as they walk. Her dark eyes study him, weighing him, considering him and genuinely curious. Learning the stories behind the travels was almost as exciting as the traveling itself.

"Yes,” the gray mare counters, "and no.” Aletta pauses for a moment and her eyes sparkle - a depthless mirth dancing - as she peers up to him. ”I was here once before,” she continues as she turns her ahead and resumes walking. "The Reckoning, I think they called it. I came looking for the Jungle - for the Amazons - and found everybody was as lost as I was.”

It had been a disappointment, back then. Aletta had spent her entire youth on the mountaintops dreaming of the day she’d find the Amazons. She had dreams of not only joining them but leading them, turning her name into a blaze of glory that would ring alongside others like Asylum and Twinge. Dreams, she learned, change and what she had found instead was something she’ll always be proud of.

"So I wandered some more until I found what I was looking for.” She slows and smiles then, absent of the teasing. Now she wanders again, the smile says, until she finds what she is looking for. Beyond. Home.

@[Mesec]