There is a wildness in her that drives her from Tephra and her mother’s side.
It is trapped in her throat, wings that flutter and thrash in her veins, her breath caught and released from her lungs as she raises her young face toward the border. She is young, too young, to be leaving the safe confines of her home, where mother’s fierce eye keeps watch and her father’s steady presence can be seen from all angles. But she does not care, cannot stay another day without knowing what lies beyond.
She leaves early, early enough that she is not caught, although she knows that she will have to apologize later. The fog was thick from where it unfurled around the mountain, the thickest parts not yet pulled back to where they usually nestle near the volcano. She breathes it in, her heart pounding with love of the familiar sight, but it is not enough to keep her; in truth, it would never be enough to hold her.
The path is easier than imagined and even at a mere six months, she is able to pick her way through it with ease, her coltish legs finding the path and guiding her along it to the outskirts of Tephra. At the border, where the water is salty but shallow, she takes a deep breath, glances over her shoulder for a moment before diving in, the water hitting her chest as she swims across the small break to the other side.
Her path takes her East, around the general crowds of the field and the murmured conversation of the meadow. She does not stop until she finds the forest, the trees jutting upward and outward, the pine of it fascinating. Grinning, she pressed her face into its branches, ignoring the thin scratches it imparted on her face. Breathing deep, she felt her pulse race in her veins. Today, she would have adventure.
She just knew it.
hawke
I’m a princess cut from marble
{ smoother than a storm }