Her world was a blur in the aftermath of the war.
When the mare who had dared spit her mother’s name had simply disappeared, the next thing she had known was the beach dissolving beneath her. The rocks tumbling. She had shifted quickly then from her massive form. First becoming a small mouse to try and escape the worst of the destruction and then a fish when she felt the water hit. It had been enough to keep her from dying, at first, but not enough to keep the rock that had split her bones in half in that fragile form. The one that had nearly shattered her in two.
She had been washed out into the sea and the rest—well, she still doesn’t know that much.
When she had woken, it had been on another beach, far from Nerine. Somewhere warmer, muddier. Her entire body had ached and her version had doubled. It had taken her hours to try and find her legs once more. By the time that she had, she had come to her senses enough to recognize that she was not in the same body she had worn before the war. So death, she thought. It was not the first time, she knew, and it would not be the last, but it made it no less jarring to look down and see a virgin body once more.
Marbling on her legs that was not quite the same.
This time, she was slightly taller—more willowy than before, more slender.
She wonders if her face was recognizable or if it was just the coloring they would recognize.
Not that it mattered.
She shook her head as she finally stood, feeling the mud cling to her pale hips, the bramble tangled into her mane. She could shift, she knows, to take to the skies and try to find her way home, but there was a bitter exhaustion in her bones and she was suddenly not certain she had it in her to try.
Not yet, at least.
I want to swim until we both begin to feel the weightlessness sink in