They were just gone. Just like that. Well, sort of just like that. Mom, well Kagerus, because Mom alone doesn’t really differentiate well, explained what was happening. Or, she tried to but Oriash didn’t quite get it. It’s hard to quite grasp why your parents are going into a self-induced dream coma when you aren’t quite a month old. The whole concept doesn’t really make sense. Somewhere in there it got distilled down to “we are going to keep your Mom (Solace) safe”, which made some amount of sense to Ori but not enough. She was sick, yes, but how did disappearing into a dream coma make her un-sick? It didn’t, she didn’t think.

She was pretty sure there were other powers that could make someone un-sick, because though she spent most of her time with her mothers, Ori didn’t live in a bubble and she wasn’t entirely stupid. At best it seemed like it just meant they were leaving her because it was easier to escape the pain and the truth and live in a dream world together. Certainly Kagerus didn’t need to go too, but she did, and they were gone. Their bodies were there, tucked away in some brush, but they were gone and Ori was on her own without even a guardian in place. For a while she just sits there, staring at their bodies, afraid of what might find them here. Little does she know, as their bodies meld into the brush around them, that she is the cause. They simply disappear from view, without the sound or smell of them left either. She has no control of the power that flows through her, no awareness of it, it simply responds to the emotions that churn within her.

She keeps staring, wondering if this was part of the dream coma, if that someone her mother had camouflaged them or simply pulled them into some dream world never to return again. There are no tears, just churning emotions that don’t show on the outside. Eventually, the little girl gets up on her gangly legs, the perfect combination of her mothers. If you knew them, you’d know her parentage. They’d stayed in the Cove all this time, tucked away now, but still in the Cove. Oriash knows the land and the faces from a distance, though she’s never really spent much time with the others. A little here and there, but mostly she stayed with her mothers. It seemed important, then, to spend what time she could with them. Though exactly what was wrong was a mystery to Ori, she had always known something was wrong. Neither of her parents had ever had the heart to tell her that she had been what was wrong – the pregnancy, not her existence, but the two could be so easily confused.

Now though, on a beautiful spring day and with no sign of her mother’s in the bush, Ori finds herself wandering through the land that is her home but not truly her home. She doesn’t who to turn to, doesn’t know if she should be sad or angry or just move on with her life. What was the point in mourning and missing something she cannot and will not have? She’d known her mothers, at least, and they’d loved her if only briefly. Why then did they both leave?

Ori shakes her head, coming to rest on the black sand beach, the stones the same as the obsidian of her hooves. Ori curls up there, in the shallows of the surf on the black beach, letting the cool spring water wash over the edges of her. What now? What next? She didn’t know, and so she simply stayed.

She is not startled when the mare approaches, though she doesn’t get up. It was hard not to hear them, after all, the giggling of the two foals obvious enough on a generally quiet day. Their giggles mingled with the lapping of the ocean, both doing their best to drown out her sorrow. Ori had siblings, she knew, but she had no idea where they were or how to find them. Maybe they were here, maybe they were elsewhere. Solace and Kagerus had never been able to introduce them, though she thinks now that they could have. Maybe Solace didn’t have the strength, but Kagerus certainly did. She could have left Solace, if only briefly, to show Ori her home, her family, the friends that she could have made.

Doubt creeps in to the beautiful picture she had of her mothers, tinging the edges of her memories black and hazy. Her parents loved her, yes, but they loved each other more. Solace came first, and she supposes they tried to love her in their months together, but had they truly? If they loved her first, wouldn’t they have done more than simply keep her sheltered and then leave her to fend for herself? What kind of love was that but selfish love? They stayed together, even when they didn’t have to, and kept their daughter only so long as it suited them.

Around her, the earth begins to turn black, like shadows creeping out of her darkening memories, though they fade at the sound of the mare’s voice. Ori clambers to her feet, legs long and gangly beneath her though she would grow into them eventually. Her wings help to steady her, and she turns to face the mare she vaguely recognizes. Sometimes her mother’s would describe their friends, and if Ori is correct, this is Dawn (though she can’t be sure without asking). The possibility puts her at ease though, unworried here in the Cove despite knowing nothing and no one.

“Gone,” Ori says, trying to keep the strange combination of sadness and anger from her voice. “Mom said something about a…a dream coma.” Ori stumbles over the last bit, and her only vague understanding of what that means is clear enough in the way she pronounces the words, almost like trying to talk through cotton. “I’m not hurt. I just don’t know where to go.”