By the time Xero made it to the Meadow, she was good and grumpy. Gangly baby legs were awkward as fuck, and didn’t work the way she was pretty sure they were supposed to. She fell over a stupid, embarrassing number of times that she will not disclose, thank you very much, and her head still hurt like cuckoo-crazy, and everything felt too big and wrong, and rocks kept jumping out of nowhere to trip her. Ow, dammit, like that. Yet again, Xero wound up on her face, grunting at the impact with the too-big, too-solid, far too damn familiar ground, and she growled and glared at the stupid sneaky rock. “That was mean. You are a meanie. I don’t like you.”
Somehow that sounded a little more pathetic than she’d meant, and instead of feeling satisfying, it just made her growl and grit her non-existent teeth and set about heaving herself upright again. At least she was getting better at that part. One foot, two foot, back foot, other back foot--look, she ran out of numbers, okay?--and UP! And heyyyy, not even over on her face this time! Just a little wide-eyed wobble, and she caught herself, legs splayed ‘cause she’d learned that trick already. Wider base made standing easier than if all her feet were close together.
Okay. Aaaand walking again.
Except the fairy bug had only provided her with a direction and not really any more useful information like how far or what she was looking for. Go that way was only so helpful, and Xero was getting tired. Climbing all the way down the biggest mountain and walking all the way to...well, to this spot. All on wobbly gangly no-balance legs that kept tripping her and making her fall over. She’d been doing better for a little while! But the tired had started to set in, and it seemed like the tireder she got, the trippier the ground got.
Ow, dammit! Yeah, like that.
Maybe this was where the fairy bug meant, because Xero was pretty sure she was all done walking for right now. Her face hurt, and her head hurt, and her most of her hurt, and this spot on the ground was maybe not so bad. So she sprawled out instead of getting back up this time, and her eyes closed, and then just like that she was fast asleep in the middle of wherever she’d ended up. Some kinda meadow or whatever.
The sound of hooves isn't unexpected, but the uneven beat of them makes me turn my head. I'm only half-done tucking my wings in from my landing when I catch sight of the little figure stumbling through the meadow. It's too late in the season for a foal this small, let alone one without a mother nearby.
Yet there she is, very young and very alone, contradicting everything I know.
I move forward without thinking, my half-furled golden wings flaring out fully in an unconscious effort to shield the tiny thing from the winter winds. By the time I reach her she is already asleep. It's miraculous, really, that skill all children seem to share, and I am reminded of my own Delta, who often fell asleep halfway through a story when he was younger.
That memory is bittersweet, though only temporarily. The buckskin colt is but a few hours away, and yet the distance between the two of us feels insurmountable. It makes sense, then, that I need somewhere to focus my maternal concern and that this sudden arrival is the recipient.
"Hey" I say gently, tapping her side gently with one long feather. I'm sure she is tired, but leaving her to sleep in the Meadow with no guardian in sight feels unsafe. "Wake up, little one."
hold fast to the break of daylight
The chill in the mountains brings the lion down from its normal precipice of Hyaline, prowling into the lowerlands and searching for sustenance elsewhere than the stringy meat of underfed goats and deer, or the quick feet of the mountain hare. It is possible that the equine-soul that remains trapped inside of the cougar also begs to venture elsewhere - to the golden, dried grasses of the meadow where he used to roam frequently when his appetite was only vegetation and the ends of his legs did not end with sharp, curved claws.
The meadow is quiet and still in the cold of autumn. Winter is well on its way and it definitely shows - there is nothing here in the lowlands, and the puma’s face matches its disappointment. A scowl allows curved canines to protrude slightly from black-lined lips, large yet softly-padded feet bringing the male mountain lion through the flat lands. There is a moment where the lion decides to turn back from whence he came, but a sound of a youngling catches the puma’s ears. Immediately he is flattened to the earth, crouching beneath the soft tangles of golden meadow grasses, his tawny pelt blending in nearly flawlessly with the foliage.
It is then that Svedka spies her easily - a two-toned child huffing and puffing loudly in the near distance, then flopping to the ground loudly. The cougar’s nose twitches, sampling the wind and wondering how it is possible that a meal has so perfectly plopped itself before him only a few powerful leaps away - his teeth would be around the filly’s throat in moments, he knew, and she would barely even have time to register the ending of her life before her heart stopped.
Svedka stalks closer, the pointed parts of his shoulder blades pressing through his skin with each careful step.
The lion’s excitement of a easy prey does not last for long. Quickly, there is the sound of feathers and hoofbeats, causing him to pause in the way he moves closer to the filly. His nose wrinkles to reveal the grimace at the notable presence of another - a mother, perhaps? He settles to the earth, contemplating his next move while the winged horse attempts to awaken what would have been his meal. The lion’s black, slow-blinking eyes continues to watch the scene unfold, when suddenly there is a flicker of blue that surfaces in the irises. The lion’s claws unsheath and tense with the uncomfortableness, the flash of color fading in and out between bright, ocean blue and endless black. The equine fights for control (he had become stronger in these last few days, the lion has noticed) and the mountain lion fights back with swift turning of his head back and forth.
Finally, the attempt to shift control from lion to horse is too much for the cougar, and with a throaty yell it leaps up from its hiding place. No longer set on attempting to find its dinner, it stands tall above the golden grasses with a terrible growl on its face as it shakes its head, fighting the urge to allow Svedka any control. For a solid, slow moment, the lion’s eyes are a significant blue as it stares at the scene before him - an unfamiliar girl with an extremely familiar navy-winged woman - before black proceeds to take over its eyes fully.
It seems whatever to have been ailing the puma now has subsided, and already knowing he has lost any chance of a meal, the male cat turns from whence he came at a casual walk - the filly is lucky a caretaker had found her when she did.
svedka
A tapping against her side and softly murmured words made Xero grumble, her ear flicking back with annoyance. Dumb fairy bug, she was tired now. It is sleep time. And besides, the bug was the little one. “Nuh-uh,” she grumped, protesting and refusing to open her eyes. Mountains were big, and she felt very small. “Don’ wanna.”
Ohhhh okay but then there was a very loud screamy yell from not far away at all, and Xero bolted to her feet the fastest she’d ever done in her whole wide existence that she could remember, silvery-gold eyes wiiiide and staring right at the very big kitty. She blinked hard and shook her head, puzzled. Kitties were...friends, right? This one looked really mad, but she was pretty sure kitties were friends. She took a step closer, head tilting. “Kitty?” Kitties were for playing, all twitching tails and pouncing, playful growls and eyes flashing from treetops giving away their hiding spots.
Yeah, kitties were definitely for playing, even when their eyes flashed from blue to black and they turned to walk away. So she grinned and gave a happy little hop, tail waggling with excitement. “Come back! I’ll play with you!” Tired was suddenly a whole lot less important when there was a brand new kitty friend to play with. Oooh, maybe it had baby kittens for her to snuggle and frolic with! She beamed over her shoulder at the oh not at all a fairy bug that had been trying to wake her up. Pretty lady with cozy snuggly blue that made her smile and think of home, not a bug at all.
Annnd then she bounded after the kitty.
Fortunately for her, about half a step in, her feet managed to get all tangled up and she tumbled to the ground again, landing awkwardly on her side. Right. Bounding was new. Trying to move faster than a walk was new, really. Xero huffed a grumpy little sigh and clambered back to her feet. Againnnn.
The little filly refuses to wake up in a way I am more-than-familiar with, sleepily grunting her refusal and bringing an amused smile to my dark face. The smile vanishes in an instant, snuffed out by the dangerous yowl from far too close. My wings flare out without conscious thought, the elbows bending tightly to make me seem as large as possible.
It is not difficult to spot the source of the scream, a tawny wildcat with flashing eyes. I am not certain why I focus on the eyes, but as they fade from black to blue and back again, I realize in some detached part of my mind that they were never yellow - as they should have been.
In this world of magics only the horses seem to have been effected, so I cannot help but wonder if the creature is truly a cat or some magician in disguise. Regardless of it's true shape, it had certainly been stalking us - or at least the filly, as no lion I know would take on an adult horse even in the dead of winter - and I know that it is danger.
So when the filly begins to stumble after it, calling encouragingly, I feel my heart leap upward into my throat.
"No!" I say, the words muffled by the leap I take forward. I flare out my wing to block her path, which might be what contributes to her tumble. Still, I'd rather see her fall than eaten. "He wants to eat you." I tell her, keeping my blue-grey eyes on the retreating back of the tawny creature. "There are plenty of things to play with but a mountain lion isn't one of them." I'd had a similar talk with Delta, after all. Well, several similar talks really, about jellyfish, coral snakes, and scorpions.
@[Xero]
@[Svedka]
((In the interest of not fighting Lepis to nom baby Xero, Svedka has excused himself from the thread. XD Just us now!))
Xero grumbled once again and got her feet firmly planted on the ground, bent on ignoring the strange lady’s no and going after the kitty anyhow. “Nuh-uh, he’s a kitty, kitties are friends.” She wasn’t quite sure how she knew kitties were friends, but she definitely knew it for sure. But the kitty’d already escaped by the time she peeked under the lady’s wing and gotten a good look at the spot where the big meow used to be.
She stomped one tiny hoof and huffed annoyance, and glowered up at the lady. “I’m ‘posed to make friends. That was not very nice, I bet he’da made a real good one too. Good claws for climbin’ trees, and the rumbly sound they make is extra good for snuggles.” Or so she imagined, ‘cause he was the first meow she’d met maybe? So how come she could feel the cozy snuggly soft feeling of being wrapped up in spotty friends, all rumbly with purrs and cozy, licking her coat and rubbing their faces against her?
The thought made her head all tingly and her ears itch, so she huffed and shook herself hard enough to wobble, caught herself with a bit of fancy footwork, and peeked up at the lady. “Friends are important, aren’t they?” Felt like there was something else important that she was forgetting, but a friend sounded like a good place to start at least. Or lots of them. “D’you got friends?”
@[Lepis]
Heda had looked so serene when she’d first spoken of motherhood to me. In my memory, her buckskin face is lit from some internal source, happiness spilling forth alongside the tale she had spun me about the joys of it, my own reaction blending with the projected emotion that was thick in the air around me. My own experience has been rather different; none of the anticipated emotions flood me when I looked at Delta...or at this filly in front of me.
”Shh. He’s leaving. Be still!” I say as she tries to duck past me, ignoring - for now - her claim that the lion might be her friend. Our world is full of magic, but it is also full of danger. Even if that particular wildcat was a shifter, there were a hundred that weren’t. They don’t often venture down from the cliffs, but I suspect the idea of easy spring prey had lured that one to the lowlands.
”Friends are important,” I acknowledge, having followed the cat with narrowed stormy eyes until I was satisfied he was gone. My tone is slightly distracted, at least until I look down at her directly. ”But more important than making friends is knowing how to tell a friend from something that wants to eat you for supper. That - ” I’m gesturing after the mountain lion with one flared wingtip ”- was something that wanted to eat you.”
She asks if I have friends and I nod without even thinking about it. I have Arthas and Wolfbane - my two friends, my two kings. Castile, too, however transient his presence in my life, and the other dragon, the one from the water. The list is short, and most of the memories are rusted and dark with time passed.
”Who told you that you were supposed to make friends?” I ask as I tuck my golden being back to my side. “-with cats” I do not add, expecting thar her loquacious nature might give me an answer without being prodded.
@[Xero]
sorry for the wait <3
Xero huffed again, all grumbly offense. “No-uh. You just gotta know how to play with big kitties. They’re extra rough sometimes, an’ when they get essited, they forget that claws and fangs are sharps. You just gotta stand up for yourself an’ tell ‘em when they’re playin’ too rough. An’ sometimes bop ‘em on the nose a little.” Or...so she imagined, she supposed.
Must have done.
She sighed and let the topic go, ‘cause she was pretty sure she wasn’t gonna win that one. Out loud, at least. Wouldn’t stop her from being right or knowing she was, but what was the point in arguing it?
“I’m glad you got friends. Not having friends is maybe pretty lonely, I think, huh? Oh! Um. I…” She frowned, tilting her head a little and trying to remember. “I dunno. There was this fairybug up on a big tall mountain, but I don’ think she told me to go make friends ezac’ly. She mostly muttered things about granting wishes? I’unno, it was all very spinny confusing, an’ I was too busy tryna stand an’ walk an’ move to really pay ‘tention.”
And trying to remember made her head all itchy buzzy again, so she stopped and shook and frowned. “But they are, right? Important? So you don’t be too lonely?” She peeked up at the blue-edged lady, still puzzled. “The fairybug told me to have fun, that means friends, I think? So maybe she did tell me, just twisty-like. Which sounds like a thing she would do, anyhow. OH! Did I tell you yet? I’m Xero.”
@[Lepis] omg clearly you had nothing to apologize for D: I'm sorry it's been forever, I could not write happy Xero while I was dealing with brother things and was basically an emotional wreck. If you wanna keep going with this thread, awesome, but if not I totallyyyy understand, I super dropped the ball on it.
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