staring at the ceiling in the dark
same old empty feeling in your heart
The heat of her breath is lost in the steam that ascends from the hot spring, a tiny cloud against a rising fog. There is no wind tonight, not in the low hollow where Lepis rests, and she follows the spirals of steam as they climb higher toward the starry sky. The moon is little more than a sliver, and the dun mare finds herself tracing the constellations overhead. She has never slept well, or for long, and while much has changed in the last few weeks, she knows that some things never will.
There is much to do when dawn breaks, but that is hours away still.
Can Oceane see these same stars from Pangea, Lepis wonders? Soon she will be able to ask, the new queen reassures herself, soon she will not have to wonder. She will fix all that is broken, if only time would humor her and bring dawn just a little faster.
She sighs, and scuffs one hoof against the red stone at the lip of the spring. A few paces away the winter snow is several inches thick, a white blanket that covers the red kingdom. Winter means resting near the hot springs, where the heat is enough to make one lament their heavy coat. Lepis does so now, and accepts that sleep is not coming.
With a shake of her head, she moves away from the spring, shivering as her feet tramp through the snow. There is nowhere specific she means to go, but wandering Loess at night is not an unfamiliar task for the pegasus mare. She moves west, winding through the hills and valleys, her steps careful and sure, even with the blanket of snow. Halfway between her spring and the border of Sylva, she pauses. Her blue-tipped ears flicker, for she is certain she had heard the sound of hooves.
“Hello?” she calls out. “Is anyone there?”
@[Khalta]
LEPIS
staring at the bottom of your glass--
hoping one day you’ll make a dream last
but dreams come slow and they go so fast |
|
The snow before him dances skillfully in the light, twisting and snaking around naked trees like a choreographed dance. Behind him, the wind howls crassly, gathering large piles of snowflakes and violently slamming them into the ground again.
Above him soft blankets of snow delicately cover the branches of worn and lifeless trees, Khalta likes to imagine that the snow is protecting them until they can bloom again in the summer, though he knows it is most likely the snow and the cold that kills them in the first place.
The landscape brings sheer delight to the colt, a wide grin on his face as he wades through the thick snow, his hooves churning the thick substance to mush as he plods through it.
Though as the colt struggles through the snow, an unfamiliar voice alarms his attentive ears, his body suddenly frozen.
With little to no courage, the small male ducks into the thick snow, his knees now covered in the freezing mush.
Slowly, the appaloosa's form changes into a plant, his body taking the form of a red-rose, softly poking out of the snow.
He hopes that he has not been noticed, even though whoever is out there probably doesn't even pose a threat to him.
After a minute or two, the cold around him becomes too much for him to handle, especially as such a small plant. Quickly, the small male changes back into his original form, a shy sort of grin expressed on his face as he stares toward the mare that had called previously "Hi!" he says with as much enthusiasm as he can throw at her, his legs wobbling slightly as he makes his way toward her.
staring at the ceiling in the dark
same old empty feeling in your heart
Her searching eyes find nothing in the cold darkness. Lepis pulls her wings a little closer to her sides, but does not continue her walk forward. There are too many creatures stalking the night for her to be anything less than cautious. It could be nothing, her rational mind tells her. It could also be a literal monster, one of nearly a dozen types that all seems to stalk Loess of late.
The red hills are no longer a haven, though she is determined to return them to such a place.
In the moonlight, everything is some shade of gray. She does not see the crimson rose. If she had, she might even have dismissed it as a part of the natural Loessian landscape. This place is known for its flora, after all, plants from every climate growing happily within the borders of the southern kingdom. The don’t all subscribe to the seasons either, Lepis knows. She’s just left a grove of blooming orchid behind at the hot spring, after all. A rose would not merit a second glance.
But a rose that turns into a boy?
That is not something she sees every day.
The shyness on his face is genuine enough to calm her now-innate distrust of shape-shifters. Despite being much larger than he was a moment ago, the rose-boy is still quite small. Too small to be wandering around in the dead of night alone, certainly.
“What brings you to Loess?” She asks him, her tone of voice remarkably welcoming despite the unusual circumstances of this encounter. “It’s a little late for kingdom visits, don’t you think?” There’s a bit of humor in her blue-grey eyes as she says this. He’s certainly no diplomat, but Lepis has raised enough children to know that treating them as adults (within reason) is often the best route.
@[Khalta]
LEPIS
staring at the bottom of your glass--
hoping one day you’ll make a dream last
but dreams come slow and they go so fast |
|
04-09-2020, 05:25 AM
(This post was last modified: 04-09-2020, 05:27 AM by Khalta.)
The mare's tone is welcoming and kind, which quite quickly and easily puts Khalta at ease, no longer fearing the dark as much as he did before.
"Hi! My name is Khalta" he says again, a smile comfortably resting on his spotty face.
The young colt unfurls his small wings comfortably, lightly tapping them against his body as he moves forward, his wobbly legs battling against the snow, it seemed a lot colder and harder than before but Khalta guessed it was probably because it was much colder at night.
"I got lost!" He says genuinely, a wide grin painted across his face as he speaks.
"And then I got lost again, and then a few more times and now I have arrived here," he says, his wings placed back into a comfortable position, they were still rather useless, small and frail, they act more like something he could express himself with while he speaks, which he usually does anyway.
The little foal had begun his adventure looking for his father, on the way he found an interesting looking bird which turned out be an owl, he followed it for a while until he crossed into Sylva where he spooked at almost everything, especially all the spooky shadows cast by the moonlight.
He rested in Sylva for a while, long enough to admire the forest and the enormous trees and then he set off once again, finally ending up in Loess.
"You're probably right, but what if I'm no diplomat?" he raises an eyebrow "What if I am an undercover spy!" Khalta extends his leg outward playfully, rather full of energy despite all the travelling that he has done recently.
He quite enjoyed pretending to be a spy in Tephra, often sneaking around other members and spying on them, gathering the latest 'intel' and quickly changing into a flower or a small tree when he was spotted, he was rather lonely but his imagination kept him busy, though quite often got him into trouble.
@[Lepis]
staring at the ceiling in the dark
same old empty feeling in your heart
The boy introduces himself, but the name he gives is unfamiliar. No Loessian mare had birthed a child with that name this season, she thinks to herself. His explanation – that he got lost, and lost, and lost again – makes sense, though she does wonder exactly how far so young a colt might have wandered on his own. Is there someone out in the darkness searching for him, she wonders? Or a dam that will wake and find him missing from her side come dawn?
Having raised an exploratory brood herself, Lepis knows better than to begin with the questions that she truly thinks the most important. Instead, she just smiles, telling him her own name, and then waiting as he speaks again.
“A spy,” she muses aloud, the ponderance in her voice exaggerated for the boy’s benefit. “Well, if you were a spy, I should probably not tell you about the hot springs, which we Loessians often seek out on cold winter nights like this one.” A gust of wind seems to emphasize this, swirling around the two of them. Snow, picked up by the gust, glitters in the moonlight. “And if you were a spy, I shouldn’t tell you about the fresh greens that grow there, which we usually only share with diplomats.” The dun mare sounds regretful, as if it is shame she cannot provide the bounty of which she speaks to this very well disguised spy.
“But if you were a diplomat, or maybe just someone here to visit Loess, I could probably show you.” The mare nods, as if deciding this for certain, and then glances back down at the spotted colt inquisitively.
“So which are you?” She asks him. “Are you an undercover spy?”
@[Khalta]
LEPIS
staring at the bottom of your glass--
hoping one day you’ll make a dream last
but dreams come slow and they go so fast |
|
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