It isn’t every day that you wake up not remembering your childhood. Two years, her mother had said. Two years spent entombed within her protective ball of ice while she healed, and Ehko doesn’t remember a thing.
She waited by the shore of the northernmost isle, out past the rising glaciers where the choppy gray sea brought frozen shards to gather at her hooves, and tried her best to recall the past. If she thought the waves might bring her clarity as well as flotsam, she was wrong. The dull slapping sound of water over rock produced nothing.
The dragon-winged pegasus sighed and turned away, headed back for the mainland where the uneven tundra fields could at least offer something to eat in the meantime. Not that she was particularly hungry, but Ehko knew that padding her flesh with fat after such a long sleep was the best option. Winter was on its way, and the nights spent here on Icicle Isle were brutally unforgiving to unprepared horses.
In the days since her reanimation, Ehko had learned everything from scratch. How to walk, where she was, what had happened to her - all blank sleeves of empty space in her mind waiting to be filled with knowledge. She absorbed as much as she could, but the impractical things like Islandres and the sound of her twin’s voice had all but faded away in her mind. Her mother, Eyas, did her best to sketch them back where they belonged, yet to Ehko it felt like replacing a priceless masterpiece with a second-hand replica. She didn’t even look the same anymore.
Eyas had shown her daughter through visual manipulation what she looked like to others, and Ehko had recoiled in horror at the reflected image.
Her body was so different. Too different. Altered in a way that her mind had trouble comprehending. To her it only felt like a day had passed since she’d gone to sleep, while the reality of her situation constantly proved that years had actually rolled by. Her trek back to the mainland ceased when she reached a thin outcropping of hardy pines, and she swept her mouth down to the ground for a quick nibble as the disorientation set in again.
Soon enough Eyas would be back to check up on her. She could drift peacefully into the psychosis of believing this was all a silly dream for a little while longer, and when she finished this bite and swallowed, Ehko would snap out of it and find herself in exactly the right place again. She lifted her head, swirled the tasty sedge stalks in her mouth, ground them into a pleasant green paste, and swallowed.
Nothing.
Sighing, the tobiano mare dappled in dragon scales lowered her head for another bite, figuring there really wasn’t any harm in trying again.
What Avocet remembers of his own childhood is hazy, like the rumored woods of misty Taiga; eerie like the silence in Silver Cove. He had been born in the Pampas, into a world full of color, and yet what he actually remembers is fairly dim. It's because I've been away from Manikin so long, the bay stallion thought.
It was always his sister who was reminding Avocet what he forgot; it was only her who was able to give him clarity where it regarded their shared past.
Huglava tried, as best as a frog could. He croaked when they veered too far off their course (remember, he would ribbet, remember we are on a quest of honor). They were trying to find Carnage, trying to find some way to restore what he had taken from Manny in the Afterlife (but was what it? What had Carnage taken from his sister?)
Eventually, Avocet's manipulated memories warped with the real ones and created a state of existence where the wandering stallion didn't even know what world he was in. Amongst the jumbled things that Avo had remembered, he had found the Dark One. That was how he had ended at the bottom of the ocean, hadn't it? (All that he remembers is the cool and the dark, they are the only things that touch his mind as he attempts to remember how he ended up here, wherever this was.)
He's trying to figure that out when the oversized amphibian spots something of interest. A mare who seems at home in this place. It's a place to start, the stern frog croaks back to his bonded as his elastic tongue snagged a fly that buzzed past. Avocet remained in the shade, unsure, still trying to piece his thoughts back together. He gave a slight shake of his brown head that was disregarded by the frog that hopped away.
"Sir Huglava!" Avocet called out, lowering his head to the ground and moving off into a trot, attempting to herd the amphibian away from the young mare. But the monk had been on a mission, determined to get back to the Mainland and his beloved volcano where the Great Amphibian rested.
Excuse me, my lady. Huglava ribbeted to her as he jumped forward, straightening his spotted shoulders as he came to a stop before her icy hooves, where her mouth had reached down for the tender grass. We seem to have lost our way and require assistance to the mainland. He contemplated complimenting her on her obvious youth and beauty before Avocet snorted, coming up behind his companion.
"It's rude to interrupt someone while they eat, Huglava." He says, like a chivalrous knight should know better.
Her mind already miles away from the frozen shores, Ehko was caught off-guard by a strange cry. Huglava! A horse had shouted, causing her to stop chewing. She lifted her head from the turf and pointed her ears at the sound, trying to decipher its meaning, and saw the source of all the noise trotting swiftly in her direction.
The bay was a fine-looking stallion, even with his nose skimming the ground. He had a smooth gait; none of his hooves were lifting and chopping back down, an awkward habit Ehko’s mother had cured her of when she’d taught herself to walk again. Initially nothing about him seemed alarming, and if Ehko hadn’t been trapped inside of an ice bubble the reception she gave him might’ve been a little nicer.
As it was, being naively unassuming and overly helpful had already gotten her killed once. Ehko wasn’t exactly keen for round two, so soon after reawakening. Her pale cornsilk ears flattened themselves backwards, a silent back off that was familiar among their kind, and the rest of her straightened up in anticipation of having to bite him back from coming any closer. She didn’t know what huglava meant in his language, but she wasn’t interested in having any.
That was when a frog hopped into her line of sight. Ehko glared it down, and when it hopped close enough there was a subtle change in her demeanor; from irate to cold-blooded, she waited until the frog was looking up at her quietly and she contemplated striking out at it with a forehoof. One good stomp, she reasoned, would be enough to finish the job.
The bay interrupted her, and the frog’s good luck was what kept her scaled leg firmly in place. “Is that frog a huglava?” Ehko insisted on an answer, now that she knew the stranger could speak common tongue. “And why are you claiming it interrupted my meal? It was your yelling to blame - not something you plucked out of a pond.” Her lip curled, indignant.
