Nekane had begun to wake in the warm comfort of Ischia and feel something odd. It felt like bile in her stomach and an aching in her joints; an ache that brought her nearly to tears with the desire for more. For something beyond the safety of her island home. The mounting restlessness had grown painful, and the young tigress could imagine herself, with such certainty, suffocating to death within the kingdom.
Though this is not to say she has been mistreated or neglected, tossed to the side with hardly a second thought. Quite the opposite, really. As granddaughter to the island's Queen, she rarely found herself alone. And recently it has only added to the thoughts of suffocation, prompting the young girl - nearly a woman now but not quite - to do something rash.
She had run.
And for the first time, not even Volos knows where she has gone.
She loves her twin with every fiber of her being (and every fiber of every being she cold create when she put her mind to it), but to be free of Ischia and everything familiar for the first time in her life is...
Epiphanic.
Spring in the Meadow is warmer than Neka had anticipated it would be. Much warmer. For good measure, her amber eyes peer briefly towards the sky but the sun seems to hang right where it usually does. A sheen of sweat breaks upon her striped coat, but after a few moments the fleeting heat is gone. Curious, the tiger-shifter unfurls from the long verdant grasses and finds a steady surety in her stance. She transitions from tiger to equine quite swiftly and her attentive gaze latches onto the charred form of a nearby colt.
He appears to glow from rugged cracks that splice his charred body like rivers of lava, and she, the innocently adventurous girl from Ischia, is instantly drawn to him.
“Did you do that?” Her words call to the strange colt over the quiet springtime breeze that has made the Meadow its home today as she tries to catch up to him, bridging the gap that grows warmer and warmer. It's only when she draws nearer that Neka notices the pleased expression upon his face, though another rumble of thunder - this one nearer - breaks her concentration. “Does it hurt?” she asks softly, the words barely finding their way from her lips as her attention returns to the fiery stranger.
“”
I will raise hell.