01-26-2021, 08:28 PM
Tornados from a butterfly's wing
Her eyes opened wide, and it made no difference. She couldn't see beyond a pace or two ahead of herself. Couldn't make out the trees until her nose brushed against them, and the roots beneath her feet were a constant hazard. It was unnerving, the way the world so easily dissolved. How quickly their easy lives unraveled.
Her wings were running ragged at the edges, the result of too many low hanging boughs catching on their fragile surfaces. Could she make it to the meadow, and win a few hours of time in the open? The distance had been long enough when the sun still shone. Now it felt like a serious undertaking.
Ama waited a few... She was sure she would have called them days before, but now, just a few sleeps. Decided in the end that she had grown claustrophobia beneath the redwoods, and needed to stretch her legs beyond the same circuits she'd gotten used to walking. There was safety in numbers. She believed that, and it made leaving the children with their family an easier thing to do. And maybe one lone mare traveling would attract less attention than a larger group might, and she could go and come back unaccosted.
She was being reckless, but the Fear in the redwoods was suffocating. She was drowning in the worries of every other resident, and it was leaving her ragged inside. Desperate to breath air that was empty of Fear and Overwhelm. All but her own. That, she couldn't shake.
There was so much darkness now, literally and figuratively speaking. She was doing what she could to imbue Hope into her loved ones, but it was getting harder and harder to conjure an emotion for others that she was having difficulty feeling herself. A heavy breath left her lungs, and she tried to catch her bearings. How long had she been walking? Caught between the dark, and her own troubled thoughts, the little mare wasn't certain how far she'd gone.
Compounding her growing trepidation was a sense that she was no longer alone on this road. It was just a feeling. There was no sound of other steps, no loud breathing or any other sound that would indicate that someone, or something, had crossed her path.
If it had been anyone else, they would have been able to come and go (or not) and she wouldn't have been any the wiser unless they'd wanted her to be. As it was, she almost missed the faint threads of emotion that brushed her consciousness. The awareness brought her to an uneasy halt, in the hopes that whatever it was was having as hard a time seeing as she was.
...Amarine
@[Torryn]