your breath is poison; your breath is wine
(you think your dreams are the same as mine)
Her knowledge of the land she had been born in is weak at best—something that should be truly shameful. Both her parents had been nomads (a gracious word) and did not tie themselves to one kingdom or another—not even a herd. She herself had been born in the meadow right before her parents had both walked into the ocean, filling their lungs with saltwater and slipping into eternal sleep. It had been her and her equally fragile brother pressed up against one another, and so it seemed he had been the only structure she had ever seen in her entire life. The only constant, except, of course, when she had abandoned him.
So she does not know what the Gates looks like (has never even heard of it before today, if she was being honest). But it sounds lovely, and she enjoyed lovely things; even more, she enjoyed places where she did not have to fear that she would run across her. It was a stressful situation for someone so fragile to live in constant terror of what she might see unwelcome during her day-to-day life. And, despite the fact that she was steeling herself for the first encounter, she feared in heart heart of hearts that she would not handle it well.
“Can we go see it now?” she asks quietly, looking up from behind her forelock, the moonlight spilling over the two of them. Shifting uncomfortably, she glanced down at the ground, frowning. “Sorry, that is probably silly.” She forces a soft laugh and shrugs her shoulders, “I have just never seen it before. I have seen so little of this land.” Her expression falls a little. “I’d like to see it before…” here, her voice trails off because she cannot bear to say ‘I die.’ She knows she doesn’t have a long time to live, cannot possibly live for years with death constantly nipping at her heels, and yet she cannot stand to face the truth of it.