where the stars go burning - jenger pony, any

[RAENE]

In a few more months she’ll need to choose. Though she has grown up as a child of the Falls, her father had always made it clear that a true home is the home that ones chooses for themselves. He had chosen the Falls - as had her mother - but Raene doesn’t have to, not if she doesn’t want to. Perhaps Kreios’ advice was born of knowledge of their family, of their wandering hooves, fickle hearts, and eternal grudges. He does not want the same for Raene, and so he has given her the chance to pick her own fate.

Unfortunately Raene knows no place but the Falls and the Field (and the path between), She knows no one but her family and her kingdom mates and the wildlife in the forests around the waterfall. How can she decide what she wants if she only knows one of the options?

She wants the answer to that question, so the two-year-old filly comes to the Meadow. Her grey eyes are bright and curious, and the soft yellow shade of her sleek pelt matches her cheery mood. Raene has only ever known kindness, so the smiles that she offers to the strangers she passes are warm and genuine. She finally settles beside a chattering creek, watching the little bits of ice melted away by the unseasonably warm sunshine.

[victra]

make my messes matter, make this chaos count,

She is a princess of the Chamber, but it does not feel like home.

She is a princess of the Chamber, but only by blood.

Victra knows what it means to have a wandering heart, to love the people that live within, love the family it holds, but to feel nothing for the land, for the Kingdom herself. She does not like the heart that beats beneath her hooves, does not like how it drowns out her own, but she finds that the sound has grown softer lately, muted, though she is unsure why. There are too many trees, too much dark, and when the fog rolls in it makes her skin itch and prickle. She aches for the sky, for wide open places, and her wings are to blame for that – but the Chamber is not these things.

So she drifts, more and more often, finding excuses to leave the dark behind and bury herself beneath aching blue skies that stretch on for miles. Today she weaves quietly through the meadow, imagining the rolling green fields and the way they must be dappled with flowers as bright as gems during the summer months - though the only grass left now are the broken pieces that poke stubbornly through the glaze of snow-melt. Still, she thinks it must be beautiful here.

She almost misses the pale yellow girl where she stands nestled among the stone and dirt and snow at the lip of a creek, but the warmth in the smile she flashes Victra is enough to make the bay girl pause, enough to make her stop and turn and join the girl on the other side of the narrow vein of icy water. For a moment she says nothing, instead letting her eyes swallow the soft yellow of this strangers skin, and then sink back to the stream where the ice bounces and tumbles until it disappears around a soft bend. When he face lifts again and eyes of pale emerald settle into the delicate angles of an unfamiliar face, there is only quiet, only gentle curiosity in the smile that etches itself across the indigo of her mouth. “I love it here, it’s so peaceful.” A pause, a heartbeat, and then, “I’m Victra.”

let every little fracture in me shatter out loud

[RAENE]

The way that the other girl’s bay coat fades into blue reminds Raene of her mother, and the warm smile that she offers Victra is perhaps a bit warmer than the one she gives to the others. When the young mare responds by coming to join her beside the water, the yellow horse shuffles a little to the side, offering her a bit more of the level ground where she stands.

They are quiet for a while, which Raene does not mind, and her grey eyes meet Victra’s emerald eagerly.

“I’d thought it would be more lively,” she admits with a toss of her sunshine forelock. “The way everyone tells stories about the Meadow, I assumed that I’d barely be able to move for all the strangers around.” Like sardines in a can, she’d thought, but they are only speckled here and there in the pale snow. It reminds her of the Falls, really. Few horses, but a handful of them willing to converse.

“I’m Raene”, she tells Victra when the indigo mare introduces herself. “Did you come here to find something peaceful?”