She is birthed to the world a stranger in her own skin.

Her pale gold eyes open one winter morning, and she is alive again. She is older than she was the last time she took a breath (at least, she remembers being smaller, taking mother’s warmth in her lungs). Her legs jut out from her prone position on the snow, longer than they were before. A dark strand of hair falls and curtains her gaze, grown from its former wispy existence along her neck. These differences she notices first, but they hardly matter. What she realizes next is that she is alone. Then, that she doesn’t remember why – she doesn’t remember anything, really.

She remembers love, but little else.

It is a golden glow that starts in her heart and warms her from the inside out. It keeps her calm on the frozen ground when she should be anything but, when she should be anywhere else. I don’t belong here, she thinks, not moving. The fleeting images of her young life are few and far between, as if they’ve been stripped or shorn away. She sees the cutting peaks of the Mountain in the distance and her chest constricts, but she doesn’t know why. She watches a family of deer as they filter slowly out of the forest, emerging from their night-hollows, and she blinks back tears.

Because it is not only her memories, sometimes foggy and sometimes missing entirely, gone from her. The worst part is the gaping hole in her very soul – the feeling that she has been halved, torn asunder. She is a diminished thing there on the snow, with eyes glazed with unshed tears. She is a lost child of the Reckoning, robbed of the life-force that should be pulsing alongside hers’. I do not belong here, she wants to cry into the snow.

But she doesn’t.

The inky girl quakes but stands on her new legs. She shakes off her mourning veil, shakes her head until a smile bobs to the surface. She remembers love, the golden glow of it that matches her own radiant skin. She keeps her love, and she remembers her name. And Vael moves forward.

Vael

and I swear I'm not a pretender

She has moved forward, but not far, when the other girl finds her.
                
This one is bright and bold pressed into the white winter at their feet.  She shines in a way that Vael does not, not needing the soft glow of source less light to stand out.  Wings fold gracefully along her apricot sides, and these, too, look anything but unnatural on the other young woman.  The differences between them are stark as the snow that erases the meadow’s colors.
                
She remembers black and white and gold - nothing like this.
                
But when the too-bright girl slides her too-bright skin against her shoulder, her breath feels the same as any.  It feels the same as her sister, she realizes with a jolt, goosebumps rippling across her black hide.  Her smile grows unconsciously, instinctually (as if Salt is with her instead of a stranger).  Her memories are like the last tide, late to come in, slow to come in, but there eventually and all at once.  All-consuming, too, wiping clean the shore every night.  In the next breath, she forgets again.  Are you alright?. 
                
“No,” she exhales, touches her delicate muzzle to Exist’s while it is pressed against her before withdrawing as slow as a sunrise.  The shared warmth leaves her too quickly.  Her face brightens despite the gloom that shades her soul.  “But I will be.”  She says it with the same certainty as the dying, with fervent gold eyes that do not blink as they hold the other’s.  She says it because she believes it, (has to) because she has already found kindness and warmth since her bleak awakening.   And because she will always care for others more than herself, she asks: “Are you?”
                
Vael cannot know that they have both lost their sister, their twin, their other half.  She can only see what is ahead of her, and that is nothing, save for the patchwork stallion working his way toward them.  Exist is alone, like her, and surely loss is the reason. 
                
(She has never been alone before, remembers only the safe squeeze of black and white and gold)
                
In another few breaths, he joins them.  This time, the girl who glows like the moon blinks easily when she looks at him.  Being around others (no longer alone) drains the darkness from her heart, eases the weight of it in her chest.  The corners of her mouth pull into a helpless grin when he nudges her chin up, up, up; his meaning is clear even if his words are not.  “I’m Vael,” she says on the coattails of a soundless laugh.  His voice fills her fluted ears instead – but only for a moment – with the heaviness of a dropped stone.  She can’t help but wonder at the way he looks between she and Exist, looks to their mouths as if anticipating their every word.  Eager to please, Vael obliges.  “Are you both lost like me?” 

Vael

and I swear I'm not a pretender