06-07-2020, 08:03 PM
Finally, Nerine.
They reach the invisible barrier between Taiga and Nerine in silence, and in the silence, Beryl has lost herself in thought. She thinks on the burning question that still lingers between them of why she claimed to be from Nerine in the field when both mares knew it wasn't true - and yet, it wasn't quite a lie, either. It was... misleading, at worst. And she thinks on how the trek from the field to Nerine may actually be the most time she has spent on travel in... Well, in ever. There is a novelty to their journey that has kept her occupied, searching the shadows between each mountain and each redwood - and oh, the shadows in Taiga are thick and old and she is eager to hears the stories they will tell her.
Another day, she promises them when they reach for her, I will come. At least one set of yellow eyes seemed to look through her without care for her promise and she took note of them, her head tilting to the left, her brow creasing, but she does not speak her concerns to Eurwen. She hurries after the rose and gold and white mare, only casting a single glance back. The strange yellow eyes that pierced through her were already gone, blinked away into the kingswood.
Another day, she tells herself.
Bit by bit the canopy of the redwood realm breaks to pieces, the trees smaller, thinner, then suddenly they fall away completely and leave the pair exposed beneath bright sun and rolling winds. The smell of the north is almost familiar and she feels a familiar nervousness roll over in her belly, and she feels like leaping coltishly as she did so, so long ago in the Meadow before the Shadows kidnapped her away from her patchwork dam. The years have removed the detailed edges from her mother's face and a sudden sadness drapes over her shoulders like a cloak when it strikes her that not once in the year and a half that she'd roamed the common lands did she ever peer around a tree trunk and wonder to if the tobiano mare might have been there. She never once looked into the Meadow for that singular pattern, and regret spreads bitterly on her tongue.
She was so caught up in what Leilan had said, in what she had done, that she had wasted her opportunity and for a moment she is dumbstruck, stopping abruptly, her nose pressing to the other mare's shoulder as if to ground herself as the world bucks beneath her hooves.
"Oh, I am such a fool, Eurwen."
The words are full of bitterness and spill out before she means them to, before she can catch them and bite them back, and mahogany-brown eyes flick up find their match in the Nerinian's face.
"I've come all the way back here and I never even looked for her." She searches Eurwen's face for understanding that she knows she won't find, searches harder than she searched the forest shadows or the meadow's lush valley. She thinks of all the places she never bothered to go, the foot of the Mountain or the banks of the broad river. A year and a half. Never mind that her mother could be anywhere, she might be nowhere. She could be in Pangea. A shiver ripples over Beryl's golden skin.
No. Not there.
They reach the invisible barrier between Taiga and Nerine in silence, and in the silence, Beryl has lost herself in thought. She thinks on the burning question that still lingers between them of why she claimed to be from Nerine in the field when both mares knew it wasn't true - and yet, it wasn't quite a lie, either. It was... misleading, at worst. And she thinks on how the trek from the field to Nerine may actually be the most time she has spent on travel in... Well, in ever. There is a novelty to their journey that has kept her occupied, searching the shadows between each mountain and each redwood - and oh, the shadows in Taiga are thick and old and she is eager to hears the stories they will tell her.
Another day, she promises them when they reach for her, I will come. At least one set of yellow eyes seemed to look through her without care for her promise and she took note of them, her head tilting to the left, her brow creasing, but she does not speak her concerns to Eurwen. She hurries after the rose and gold and white mare, only casting a single glance back. The strange yellow eyes that pierced through her were already gone, blinked away into the kingswood.
Another day, she tells herself.
Bit by bit the canopy of the redwood realm breaks to pieces, the trees smaller, thinner, then suddenly they fall away completely and leave the pair exposed beneath bright sun and rolling winds. The smell of the north is almost familiar and she feels a familiar nervousness roll over in her belly, and she feels like leaping coltishly as she did so, so long ago in the Meadow before the Shadows kidnapped her away from her patchwork dam. The years have removed the detailed edges from her mother's face and a sudden sadness drapes over her shoulders like a cloak when it strikes her that not once in the year and a half that she'd roamed the common lands did she ever peer around a tree trunk and wonder to if the tobiano mare might have been there. She never once looked into the Meadow for that singular pattern, and regret spreads bitterly on her tongue.
She was so caught up in what Leilan had said, in what she had done, that she had wasted her opportunity and for a moment she is dumbstruck, stopping abruptly, her nose pressing to the other mare's shoulder as if to ground herself as the world bucks beneath her hooves.
"Oh, I am such a fool, Eurwen."
The words are full of bitterness and spill out before she means them to, before she can catch them and bite them back, and mahogany-brown eyes flick up find their match in the Nerinian's face.
"I've come all the way back here and I never even looked for her." She searches Eurwen's face for understanding that she knows she won't find, searches harder than she searched the forest shadows or the meadow's lush valley. She thinks of all the places she never bothered to go, the foot of the Mountain or the banks of the broad river. A year and a half. Never mind that her mother could be anywhere, she might be nowhere. She could be in Pangea. A shiver ripples over Beryl's golden skin.
No. Not there.
@[Eurwen]