Beyah lifts her slender black head from the grass and broken tendrils of green and brown spill from those dark, whiskered lips. For a moment those strange periwinkle eyes trace the shape of dawn blossoming over the ridges of a distant mountain just beneath the horizon. Maybe those were the mountains mother had returned to, the place where the ground touched the sky so she could sleep among her stars. A beautiful but a lonely place, Beyah thought with the hint of a frown on her delicate mouth.
Warrick tensed beside her, imperceptible, but it was enough to draw her attention away from the pink morning sky. Instead her eyes fell on his face, traced the clenched muscle along his jaw and the tightness of the frown on his mouth. She felt herself smile. “Change is good, brother.” She chided, bumping her black nose against the dark brown of his shoulder. “Don’t look so concerned.” But her voice was soft, light, so much like their mothers.
Despite herself, she found his concern momentarily contagious and her thoughts drifted suddenly to their childhood home. Mother had raised them in the Gates, in a quiet corner where no one had paid them much attention. She had been well past her days of servitude, but loyalty, or maybe nostalgia, had coaxed her back long enough to birth the twins and raise them there. But as soon as Beyah and Warrick were old enough, she had disappeared back into the dusk to return to her solitude in the mountains. For a few years the twins had been content living as nomads within the quiet kingdom, but restlessness was in their blood. It didn’t take long for them to drift away, through the in-between places and the meadow, and then finally come to rest within the borders of the Field.
Her jaw clenches and releases, a quiet sigh filling her chest as she reached out to rest the curve of her cheek against Warrick’s smooth neck. “Stop that, you’re making me worry.” But it was said kindly with a quiet smile that touched her periwinkle eyes. When she drew back to look at him once more, it was objectively and from beneath a furrowed brow. From the proud curve of his neck to the stoic way he watched the horses wandering nearby, no one would ever notice his apprehension without digging through his thoughts. She was glad for that, appearances meant a lot to her twin. A soft smile pulled at the edges of her dark mouth. “To new adventures, Warrick.”
BEYAH
our universe was clothed in white