so i had done wrong but you put me right
my judgement burned in the black of night

She is a mess.

Areane knows this without having to see her reflection. The glittering pegasus knows that she is a disaster; one only needs to look at her. Her dark mane laid knotted and tangled, wrapped in thick masses, against her slender neck. She had never cared much for her looks, but now she despaired at the thought of anyone noticing her while the storm was still so fresh in her mind and on her skin.

Half of Beqanna probably heard the way she crashed through the trees, dispersing a rather loud murder of crows. She had plummeted most of the way down, and even when her wings had caught her, Areane had only managed to fly in an erratic, zig-zagging motion. She had surrendered in exhaustion to the wind and left herself at the mercy of it, trusting that it eventually would carry her to the ground. 

It had. But she ached. Every bone in her body felt heavy and moving felt as if she was climbing a mountain with each step she took. Rest is what she needed, but determined to get away as far away from the Mountain as she could, Areane continued to move her exhausted body. A layer of new-fallen snow softened her steps, but the cold burned her lungs. Tephra would be warm, she reminded herself.

So long as it had not succumbed to any of the strange events that had taken place across Beqanna. 

The thought made her pause, and finally relenting to her increasing exhaustion, the winged woman leaned her weight against a silver birch.

so i had done wrong but you put me right
my judgement burned in the black of night

Her wings had begun to sag, as if they were still burdened from the memory of the storm of nightmares. The fringes of her onyx feathers had even reached the ground where their blue-black irridisence brushed against the lightness of the new-fallen snow; a stark contrast to how she felt. The birch made no protest as she sharply pushed herself away from it at the approach of the stranger.

It was Areane who made an inaudible noise, a hum of something that barely escaped her throat.

Turning her shimmering head towards the approaching horse - a blended figure of black and gleaming gold with shadows trailing behind him - her ears flicked back, and then forward before the slender pegasus moved again. Tucking her wings neatly alongside her barrel, Areane turned herself around so that the stallion might greet her directly.

With her mind still swirling with terrible things (or rather emotions, the memories are there but they are like half-remembered dreams), she tenses when he speaks. Her dark shoulders tighten and it takes everything remaining in her to release it with a short exhale. A plume of silver smoke escapes from Areane’s flaring nostrils and the young pegasus does her best to form something that resembles a small smile.

"I will be,” Areane says, an affirmation. (It’s the closest she can come to admitting that something is wrong in the presence of someone she doesn’t know.) Her sides - though covered by her shimmering wings - are still lathered with sweat and perhaps it’s her own imagination, but the winged female still thinks that she can scent the fear clinging to her skin.

Could he smell it as well?

It’s then that her head turns from side to side, glancing around and then, eventually, tilting back to the sky above that she had fallen from.

"Could you point me in the direction of Tephra?” Her attention returns to him, this paradox of shadow and light before her, and Areane’s tight smile breaks a little as her nerves begin to settle. Her heart no longer flits about like a hummingbird, though it still flutters uneasily at her inability to recognize her way home. "I'm afraid this last storm has me turned around."

so i had done wrong but you put me right
my judgement burned in the black of night

Something shifts on his dark face, an expression she can’t name but only identify because it reminds her of how plummeting from the sky had felt. Something in her sinks, and in the descent, a thousand worries descend like storm clouds. This stranger wasn’t familiar with Tephra, and what he says next is even more worrying.

The lands have become inhabitable since all the rage-winds that took place surrounding the Mountain. For a minute, it feels like Areane is spinning again. She shivers subconsciously, her body remembering the cold rain as it pelted her blue-black hide; the snow-covered ground vanishes as she recalls and remembers. The former Loessian nearly loses her footing until she hears the voice of her father (Tarian was always such a steadfast man, it is easy for her summon him in her mind’s eye and hear precisely what he would say: Find the herds. Chaos often drives the herds together.)

"Thank you,” she tells the spotted stallion quickly, swallowing her rising panic. There is a lump in her throat, full of fears of what might have happened to Tephra, to her parents, to Starros. Her inability to speak would do them no favors and she would learn nothing from being silent. "If we can find our way out of the Forest, the volcano should be visible from the land-bridge.”

If it even still exists, her fear goads. 

Areane begins to make a circle, glancing her amethyst eyes up to the sky (with a twinge of apprehension furrowing on her speckled brow), trying to grasp some sense of direction. Which way she had fallen from? Had the Mountain been through the thick copse of trees behind them, or would Tephra be waiting on the other side? She could fly and easily get a sense of where they were, but the thought of flying so soon made the dark wings at her slender sides nearly clasp themselves again her barrel.

"Have you heard of any place where others might be seeking shelter?” Areane asks. The Forest was still standing, so it gave her a measure of some (small) hope that other places might as well. How much has changed? she so badly wants to add. 

And then she realizes that the stallion nearby with the gleaming spots has offered to help her and she has offered him almost nothing in return. "I am Areane,” she goes on to say, knowing that her name was poor compensation for anything. But it was what she had, and given the turbulent times they found themselves living in, the onyx-colored pegasus offered it as a token of her gratitude.