05-18-2021, 06:20 PM
Tornados from a butterfly's wing
She was still uncertain about the daylight. Every night as the sun sank beneath the horizon line, her heart trembled, her eyes darted to the shadows and searched for hungry yellow eyes looking back. Every dawn was a gift and a blessing. She was more fearful than she had been, but there were compensations.
Her strange and wonderful new daughter, a girl built for long evenings because she brought the light with her wherever she went. The queer, too-clever-to-be-natural fox that never seemed far from her side these days. And her family, growing and safe and enduring. Even with losses. Even with hardship. There was still love that kept them going.
It was sappy. She knew that, but it was something worth clinging to. The world had ended, more or less. There was no getting away from the newness of things now. A world similar to, but not quite, what it had been. The towering fungi and rumbling bellows occasionally sounding from the forest depths were easy evidence of that.
The black little mare had wandered for days on returning, taking in the changes. Relearning the paths that she had been so familiar with before. The fox darted ahead, nosing through piles of pine needles and hollow tree knots. She smiled at the creature's antics, until the harlequin body froze, and she paused to see where it was looking.
Half-expecting something horrific, a Monster or one of the slavering spider wolves that had been spotted in the darker corners of Taiga recently. The reality was much less anxiety-inducing, though it took her pulse a moment longer to get the message.
Clearing her throat, she broke from her path into the clearing, sunlight illuminating the faceted surfaces that winked from her skin. "Hello," she called out, pulling no powerful emotions from the flower bedecked mare she'd come upon. "Are you new here?" It was either that, or a stranger passing through. There wasn't much between that.
...Amarine
@[Bardot]