05-01-2021, 06:32 PM
The light that meets the dark
That morning, Cheri hardly knew where the wind took her. The sky had just broken apart, shafted through with spears of winter’s daylight that struck her closed eyes and refused to let them remain shut. “Adventure is calling.” Cheri thought sluggishly, wishing the damn thing would be quiet for a spell, but she was awake by then and it felt useless to resist a good mood. Shivering, the young mare stretched her neck and shook out the warm tension of standing while sleeping, quick to trot out from her hiding covey on the eastern side of Loess where she’d slept the night away. Her breakfast was a quick one - just tugging at random edibles while she passed them by - and the chill of the early morning swept her up into the sky thereafter, too much of a temptation to resist when the heavens felt close enough to touch.
She flew without a destination in mind, quickly coming to find that the terrain had changed below her from canyons and valleys to woods and dense pockets of shadowy darkness. “The forest.” She thought, lowering her altitude to coast high above the bare-limbed treetops with her forelegs tucked near to her belly and her hind legs drifting out lazily behind.
She hadn’t thought about him in what felt like ages - Anubias, that was. The shimmering colt from an encounter in her youth who helped Cheri make her way back home when she’d been lost at the beginning of the Eclipse year. She remembered him telling her that he’d grown up in a stretch of commonswood with his parents and she wondered if that was still true. “Only one way to find out.” She decided, her curiosity over the matter sending her even lower toward the wintery grove. Flapping her wings, Cheri galloped through the air and skimmed the very tops of the trees with her crystalline pink hooves, circling wide until she found the edge of the sector where the forest thinned out. There, she landed.
For a few miles or so the going was easy. Cheri huffed great plumes of icy clouds, looking around in wonder at the serene wilderness and taking little paths through the commonwealth. To her surprise she came across a few horses along the way: a mated pair of unicorn traveling south for the winter, and a grizzled old stud covered in scales that hissed a very obscene offer at her to join his merry band. Cheri pleasantly declined, bristling for another mile after that until at last she chanced upon a small waterfall near the base of a ravine. She stopped to drink, admiring the spring-fed water trickling over slat stones covered in algae, and appreciating the silence.
She flew without a destination in mind, quickly coming to find that the terrain had changed below her from canyons and valleys to woods and dense pockets of shadowy darkness. “The forest.” She thought, lowering her altitude to coast high above the bare-limbed treetops with her forelegs tucked near to her belly and her hind legs drifting out lazily behind.
She hadn’t thought about him in what felt like ages - Anubias, that was. The shimmering colt from an encounter in her youth who helped Cheri make her way back home when she’d been lost at the beginning of the Eclipse year. She remembered him telling her that he’d grown up in a stretch of commonswood with his parents and she wondered if that was still true. “Only one way to find out.” She decided, her curiosity over the matter sending her even lower toward the wintery grove. Flapping her wings, Cheri galloped through the air and skimmed the very tops of the trees with her crystalline pink hooves, circling wide until she found the edge of the sector where the forest thinned out. There, she landed.
For a few miles or so the going was easy. Cheri huffed great plumes of icy clouds, looking around in wonder at the serene wilderness and taking little paths through the commonwealth. To her surprise she came across a few horses along the way: a mated pair of unicorn traveling south for the winter, and a grizzled old stud covered in scales that hissed a very obscene offer at her to join his merry band. Cheri pleasantly declined, bristling for another mile after that until at last she chanced upon a small waterfall near the base of a ravine. She stopped to drink, admiring the spring-fed water trickling over slat stones covered in algae, and appreciating the silence.
@[Anubias]