01-23-2022, 02:45 PM
Sickle had not been brave enough to go home with Malik that day they had met. She had retreated from her fears, finding solace with Asterope - staying with her pond-bound friend until she began to worry that she was being intrusive.
The ground had trembled but it was days and days later when she finally went to investigate - stunned to find that the Pampas no longer existed. She had dove into the water, finding the remnants of the flower fields - those blossoms long dead, drowned and suffocated.
She could not say she would miss that place, but she fretted over the fates of her friends. Time stretched and she had been so lost herself that she did not even know where to begin looking.
Except for one place. Where her family lived, the family that she didn’t really know and who didn’t know her. Her brother and her sister, at the very least, she wanted to know were safe.
Even if it was long since the earthquake, even if anything and everything could have happened between now and then, Sickle’s uncertainty needed an answer.
Which is what brought her here, to the foothills outside Hyaline. Farther than she’s managed to get and she berates herself for her cowardice. They are only mountains, it’s only just another land inside. It does not house the same nightmares, Malik had told her, but her fear is the only consistent thing she has known in her life and it is not so easily shed.
In the early morning light, Oceanus circles overhead and in her agitation the brindling on her coat flickers with the colour of his fire, bright blues flashing here and there. She frowns at the mountains as she stands there - as though remaining still will reveal a path that she cannot currently see (or does not want to see).
The ground had trembled but it was days and days later when she finally went to investigate - stunned to find that the Pampas no longer existed. She had dove into the water, finding the remnants of the flower fields - those blossoms long dead, drowned and suffocated.
She could not say she would miss that place, but she fretted over the fates of her friends. Time stretched and she had been so lost herself that she did not even know where to begin looking.
Except for one place. Where her family lived, the family that she didn’t really know and who didn’t know her. Her brother and her sister, at the very least, she wanted to know were safe.
Even if it was long since the earthquake, even if anything and everything could have happened between now and then, Sickle’s uncertainty needed an answer.
Which is what brought her here, to the foothills outside Hyaline. Farther than she’s managed to get and she berates herself for her cowardice. They are only mountains, it’s only just another land inside. It does not house the same nightmares, Malik had told her, but her fear is the only consistent thing she has known in her life and it is not so easily shed.
In the early morning light, Oceanus circles overhead and in her agitation the brindling on her coat flickers with the colour of his fire, bright blues flashing here and there. She frowns at the mountains as she stands there - as though remaining still will reveal a path that she cannot currently see (or does not want to see).
@bolder