She is thrilled when her mother agrees—putting up token resistance and then folding, such an easy agreement that Adna can only assume her mother wants to go as much as she. So, together, the pair of them make their way to the island. Night has fallen and the companionship is easy, her mother delighting her with stories and tales (she has no idea what is true and what is just a product of her mother’s brilliant imagination) and then her very gifts, the wings by her side turning to the twilight of the bridge.
Adna inhales sharply with wonder, never not enamored with her parents, and noses the wings, amazed when they simply disappear to her touch, turning into a soft play of light and shadow around her.
She giggles with joy and pulls back, her serpentine eyes bright and full of life.
It is a buoyant feeling and she can barely contain herself when they finally reach the island. Her mother can see it, the way that Adna feels it in her veins, and Leliana doesn’t try to keep her. She presses a kiss to her forehead, something as comforting and old as time, and then releases her, like letting a bird free from the palm. Adna wastes no time, digging in and flying forth into a mostly empty expanse of beach.
She is no longer the tiny girl of her youth, and she feels it in the way her coltish limbs carry her now. She is nearly two years of age, and although her hip sometimes feels like it is overtaking her shoulder, she is mostly elegant in form. Nothing delicate about her—she wouldn’t shatter at a fall—but nothing bulky either. Just the graceful lines of her ancestors, the strength and the elegance in the way she stretches now, feeling the snow foreign beneath her hooves. There is no one around her now. No one to stop her or know her as Vulgaris’ serpentine daughter. No one to tell her to slow down, to take it easy—
and so she doesn’t.
She just throws her head back and laughs and runs straight into the water, her scales shimmering beneath the moonlight and the tiny, impossible balls of captured twilight that illuminate the entire island.
howl at the half moon, radio queen. she's all smoke. she's all nicotine.