they promised that dreams can come true

Some part of Ori would love to hear the stories of her mother, to know the version of the mare everyone else knew. Some part of her longs to open her heart to the possibility that Kagerus had a good side, because her mind knows that of course she did. Her mother had been a legend in her way and time, for various reasons certainly but they were not all bad. Yet her heart is a stubborn, bruised thing. To hear the goodness of her mother, the goodness that never made it to Ori, reopens wounds she can barely keep closed. It is a slash into a place already split wide, digging deeper and deeper into bone.

Perhaps it hurts more because so few of them know how easily Kagerus left a tiny child behind.

Ori makes her way with Eurwen to Nerine, a place Ori knows little about. She certainly doesn’t know the tension between their kingdoms, but likely she would not have cared away. Loess may be home, and the things Castile is capable of do not bother Ori, but that doesn’t mean she follows him blindly. Eurwen needed help, and in so many ways, Ori will always be the product of her mothers.

They chat some, though Ori has never minded silence either. The other mare seems to come back to herself in bits and pieces, some sort of life appearing in her dark eyes. There was far more healing to go, but it was a step, and that was something.

Nerine, as it turns out, is a stunning place even in winter. Though cold and dead, Ori can hear the ocean in the distance, can taste the familiar salt in the air. Ori finds that she would love to explore, and she would love to see this place in the spring. She can’t help but paint it around her, green beneath her feet, speckled with flowers.

The illusion is almost subconscious and doesn’t cover much ground, just the area beneath them. If she tried, perhaps she could get the temperature of the air right, the light from the sun. But she’s not really trying. Rather, sometimes it’s just easier not to control it. “Your home is beautiful,” she says to the other mare. “How long have you lived here?