I am blue today. I feel blue today. The color has blotted out my usual vibrantly green coat, like an inkblot that bleeds slowly out from the center of my back and drips down across my ribs and seeps into my legs. It’s a dark blue, midnight I think, nearly black. I like the color, like how it’s not enough to make me stand out, yet still enough to hint at the fact that I’m different. Something still feels … off. So I think, and then I smile, and my mane and tail drain pigment until they’re a silvery grey. “There,” I think, “I’ve got it right.”
Mother would curl her lips ever so slightly downwards and exhale. She thinks my gift is wasted by my vanity, but I cannot help who I am, and I cannot help that she is plain and boring and always so sickeningly green. Besides, Lupei is her star and a powerful one at that, so she doesn’t need to bother herself with me anymore. He has death on his tongue and enough offspring to satisfy her lust for domination so what more could she ask for? She wanted me to be strong-willed, a master deceiver and a siren at that, but I’m more content with wearing bold spots and standing out. She gave me her iron will and I developed my own sharp tongue, so it’s her fault that I’ve grown away from our little oddball family.
Besides, she’s not even honest with herself majority of the time.
I know what she hides, deep in her heart. I remember seeing her with the fissured mare, the way her eyes longingly danced over the broken skin and how they deftly touched each other when I was a child. Perhaps she thought that maybe I too would inherit her strange affinity for the same sex, but I turned out quite the opposite. I’m sensual, and it’s obvious in my demeanor. I step without hesitation, and I’ve been graced with a classical sense of beauty from my unknown ancestors. I thrive on attention, and that’s why I’m here - basking in the newness of spring and reveling in the seclusion of the forest, so much like my home yet so different.
I see a co-mingling here, and my eyes bob over the throng. I could insert myself easily, but instead I wait, wondering if there is someone who could occupy my time in other ways. DACIA
And I'll owe it all to you, oh. My little bird. Shh, our little bird might get in trouble.
She isn’t the slyest of all horses, in fact she is still quite clumsy and struggles holding anything faster than a walk. At the moment, she is half jogging at a very wobbly pace beyond the reach of the playground in hopes the faeries won’t notice her missing.
She is, after all, their current priority.
But things are so boring. Eberley spends an extensive amount wading herself in the lake (because aside from swimming there truly is nothing else to do), and that started to get old. She felt brave enough. She felt bold.
It was time for an adventure.
What is that old saying? It is best to beg for forgiveness than to ask for permission?
So incredibly pertinent at this time.
Her warm chocolate body maneuvers around old trees and fallen logs. She is moving faster now, almost a trot if you turn your head sideways and close your eyes every three seconds. So close to being poised and elegant.
Her hoof falls into the crack of a root and she goes tumbling into a somersault.
Close—I said—close.
She recovers boldly, with her movement to stand strong and the courage in her eyes burning. Our little bird takes her tumble very seriously, this cannot happen again.
Her nose extends to her shoulder to itch away a dead twig clinging to her coat. She is beautifully adorable, standing there. When she moves, yes she looks like a train wreck, but standing there where gracefulness cannot be detected she looks like a child who will become something of a lady.
She will be more than the ordinary.
With a quick shake of her head, no one saw, and an adjust in her posture she is trotting again. It is completely obvious that she is counting every step, overanalyzing every movement and absolutely absorbed in her own concentration—you might find that endearing and you might find that exhausting, needless to say I will not penalize you for either.
Oh dear, God. Somebody warn her.
Our little bird is enveloped in her own mind (might I add her trot is flawless). Unfortunately the consequence for being so forcefully elegant is her lack of awareness.
For example, she isn’t aware of the trees.
Or the fallen logs.
Or, even, the midnight navy body currently placed so perfectly in the middle of her track.
Have you ever seen the Polar Express? Imagine that train, being Eberley, and this stranger being a car.
In the name of the father, and the son, and the holy spirit.
Eberley is, of course not as strong as a train. And so when her body makes contact, she folds into an embarrassing piece of paper and collapses to the floor in a heap. Her hazel eyes blink, her head feeling heavy and her legs going numb. She blinks several times fast before coming to the realization she has had an accident.
Thank God insurance isn’t a thing.
The thump is unsettling, if not anything else. I stumble forward a bit (she is, after all, a growing bundle) and then my head swings around to pinpoint the intrusion with narrowed eyes. A little filly, warmly painted mocha with blinking eyes to accentuate her adorable face. My own face brightens, a coy smirk holding back a gentle chuckle at the tangle of legs before me. “Oh dear.” I sigh, head tilting ever-so-slightly before I turn my body so that we are facing each other. My dark nose extends to her, huffing the air above her dainty little head and I softly ask, “Are you alright?”
I’m not exactly enamored with children. I’m not in an eager race to create one of my own, but that also doesn’t mean that I deplore them. They’re new to this world, and when I think back to when I was like her - trying so hard to understand my own body - I only feel a pang of sympathy. Whoever she belongs to, they must be proud. She’s certainly pretty, and I have to refrain myself from speaking to her in a cooing tone, as hard as it is, because she’s blinking up at me with those doe-brown eyes and I’m grinning back at her like I would my own future little rugrat.
Darn these kids and their irresistible habits.
But enough of the sentimentality. It’s very clear to me that this youngling has strayed far from the nest, and I’m intent on making things right. “Where’s your mother, hmm?” I question, one eye narrowing playfully. I hope she hasn’t got an attitude about it, but perhaps that’ll make me like her more. Who knows. “I’m Dacia.”DACIA
And I'll owe it all to you, oh. My little bird. “I am not a baby,” she states with a curled lip and defensive eye. Her expression is cold, perhaps not as intimidating as she intended while she raises herself rather clumsily from the forest floor.
It isn’t that she is upset at this stranger, it is more about the fact this stranger has already taken on the caring parental role when really, Eberley wants the roll. It has been too long (ahem, never) since she got to make her own decisions. And here comes this… this oddly coloured female… from the most secluded part of the forest and suddenly Eberley is the coddled one?
No. No way.
“I am 180 days old for your information and I am quite the grown up,” it isn’t exactly convincing--her nose in the air was an honest try and her adult like voice more than a few notes off puberty--but truly, one should only laugh at her confident demeanor. Or kill her.
Whichever, truly.
If Eberley was slightly open minded, she would realize this kind stranger is speaking to her in a very respectful way, but unfortunately our little bird is a little short on socialization. Her voice has hardly been practiced and her manners barely taught. She knows please and thank you, no and yes, but nothing beyond what the fae teach in daily routine. Eberley is most certainly a work in progress, a project.
The kind of project you avoid until the end of the school year and only hand it in half done to obtain some sort of passing mark.
Her whole life, all 180 days, she had been given the shortest straw.
The mare extends her nose overtop of Eberley’s head and a puff of air lightens her fluffy forelock. It is the slightest bit of affection, so slight in fact our little Eb isn’t entirely sure what it means. It just sends her into an uncomfortable shy silence.
Something that rarely happens.
Staring at her makes Eberley feel envious. Whomever raised her must have been nice, because how she is treating a little child now can only be a reflection of her childhood. It is something that sends a spark trickling down her throat and leaving what I can describe as an explosion in her stomach. A lonely feeling.
The question, it pops into the air abruptly and for a second Eberley leaves it to hang like dry laundry on a clothesline. Wouldn’t it be heavenly to answer, “at home.”
But she cannot answer it like that, Eberley doesn’t have a mother.
So there it is, lingering in the air and creating an unfathomable tension in the air thicker than over churned butter. Her weight shifts from left to right, a sign of anxiety through body pacing.
“Not here,” she answers. It isn’t a lie, it isn’t a trick. Her mother simply is not here. She is somewhere else, doing something, maybe with someone else.
“Dacia is a weird name,” but deep down she likes the simplicity.
I can tell almost immediately that I’ve wounded her, which is the last thing that I’d wanted to do. The filly is practically brimming with her own need to be self-sufficient. It spills over into her mannerisms and short words, but nothing that this girl could say would break my unusually thick skin. She is, after all, so much a reflection of myself that I start to understand my own dam’s frustration with me. “One hundred and eighty days!” I exclaim, ears falling back while my eyes open wide to suggest that I’m taken aback and impressed. Six months old? Her size betrays her. “Then of course, I’m in the wrong.”
Still, the smile remains on my lips and I cannot help but find her something of a diamond in the rough. She stills at my nearness, and I’m worried that I’ve scared her - after all, I wouldn’t personally take too kindly to a strange horse inhaling me. I don’t want to frighten her, so I ease back while she paces, her nervousness apparent in her troubled gaze. “Oh.” I muse softly, wondering if perhaps she is a wayward soul, or if she’s become lost from her creator. I think for a moment, ultimately deciding that I have nothing better to do with my time, so I roll my shoulders and make as if I’m suddenly bored with the others dispersed around us.
“It’s super weird.” I agree, turning my attention back to her with the quip of a smirk. “But enough boring talk. I haven’t really got any company so maybe you’d like to stick around for a bit with me?” I question, relaxing my position to insinuate that I was going to be here for some time. “I know you’re an adult and all, but I’m the master of hide-and-seek and I haven’t played it in a long time.” I suggest, wondering if the idea would entice her. I grin, easing forward so that my blue-black body is standing in front of a thick tree. With a quick look about I’ve got the gist of my surroundings, and then I use my trait to change my skin to match the backdrop - in effect, becoming somewhat invisible.
“My older brother is the only one who could sniff me out.” I laugh, changing back to the blue-black she first saw me in. If only she knew how literal that statement was. “Or we could do something else - cause a little trouble.” I muse, making my way back to her. “You know, just until someone comes around to claim you.”DACIA
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