09-02-2019, 09:37 PM
(This post was last modified: 09-02-2019, 09:38 PM by Neverwhere.)
Anyone else might have asked. They might have asked why Heartfire gave them this gift, they might have asked the cost of it, they might have thanked her for it. Neverwhere does none of these things, indeed, their conversation is very limited on the trip to Nerine, and she is aware of those blue eyes watching her drink in the sights before her like a horse finding water after days searching in the desert. Her skin twitches, as if she feels the pointed gaze, like fly bites on her shoulder, but it is a small irritation nagging the back of her mind, and is nothing to the clear and shining lake, or the dark sands.
Black sand. It’s the details she gets lost in, the bubbling and splashing of the waterfall and the small spectrum that forms in its mist. The fallen logs within the Hyalinian lake that look as if she could touch them, though they are many, many, feet deep at the very bottom. Before meeting Heartfire, she would have known the lake was there, she would have seen it, smelled it, but she could never have estimated it’s clarity. She would never have guessed that water could be so clear. The dappled mare does not gape and exclaim, but she throws an occasional glance back to Heartfire, wonder and suspicion warring one another. These things are amazing, yet she cannot help but question them. Even as the details absorb her, she side-steps them, wary, waiting, searching for the lie she isn’t sure exists.
By the time they reach Nerine with its vast sea-cliffs and wild, wind-beaten, grass, the dappled mare has seen as many, if not more, impressive sights than she has seen in the few years of her traveling. As she once said to Lilliana in the forest, she has heard and smelled and felt many a beautiful view in that time, but to see them was a different thing entirely. Standing on the edge of a cliff with the air buffeting against you and the sound of waves crashing on rocks below, with the salt-scent in your nostrils and on your lips, these are elements of the experience, but to also see the dizzying height, the ocean fading into the sky an immeasurable distance away, and finned creatures rising fluidly in and out of the rolling waves, it could not be adequately described to someone that had never seen such things.
When Neverwhere and Heartfire finally come to a central area of Nerine where a few other horses scatter across the wind-whipped, grassy, plain, she is exhausted and eager to see the end of the trip, eager to close her eyes and not see once again. Nerine, at least for a little while. The dappled mare does not know what she will do if she does not have her wandering.
When was the last time I stopped? She ponders the question, but the answer is, she never did. Once she left her home, her hooves carried her, sometimes north, sometime west, but ever away. The idea that she might stay here forever chafes and chokes, like a lasso around her neck, but what harm is there in a short stay? Besides, there are still so many things to see and she will take advantage of that as long as the Nerinian queen sees fit to let her use it.
Black sand. It’s the details she gets lost in, the bubbling and splashing of the waterfall and the small spectrum that forms in its mist. The fallen logs within the Hyalinian lake that look as if she could touch them, though they are many, many, feet deep at the very bottom. Before meeting Heartfire, she would have known the lake was there, she would have seen it, smelled it, but she could never have estimated it’s clarity. She would never have guessed that water could be so clear. The dappled mare does not gape and exclaim, but she throws an occasional glance back to Heartfire, wonder and suspicion warring one another. These things are amazing, yet she cannot help but question them. Even as the details absorb her, she side-steps them, wary, waiting, searching for the lie she isn’t sure exists.
By the time they reach Nerine with its vast sea-cliffs and wild, wind-beaten, grass, the dappled mare has seen as many, if not more, impressive sights than she has seen in the few years of her traveling. As she once said to Lilliana in the forest, she has heard and smelled and felt many a beautiful view in that time, but to see them was a different thing entirely. Standing on the edge of a cliff with the air buffeting against you and the sound of waves crashing on rocks below, with the salt-scent in your nostrils and on your lips, these are elements of the experience, but to also see the dizzying height, the ocean fading into the sky an immeasurable distance away, and finned creatures rising fluidly in and out of the rolling waves, it could not be adequately described to someone that had never seen such things.
When Neverwhere and Heartfire finally come to a central area of Nerine where a few other horses scatter across the wind-whipped, grassy, plain, she is exhausted and eager to see the end of the trip, eager to close her eyes and not see once again. Nerine, at least for a little while. The dappled mare does not know what she will do if she does not have her wandering.
When was the last time I stopped? She ponders the question, but the answer is, she never did. Once she left her home, her hooves carried her, sometimes north, sometime west, but ever away. The idea that she might stay here forever chafes and chokes, like a lasso around her neck, but what harm is there in a short stay? Besides, there are still so many things to see and she will take advantage of that as long as the Nerinian queen sees fit to let her use it.
Neverwhere
.........
