Ethenia
it was an honest mistake
Once she had begun running, she could do little to stop herself. The path that had stretched invitingly before her shrank away until soon it became nothing at all. She could feel the eyes of the trees watching her, as though they could smell her desperation. Could trees feel pity? She became keenly aware of every leaf, every twig she snapped in her haste. The brush clawed at her skin electrically, like lightning flicking at sand, melting it, resolving it into perfect shards of glass. She could have been made of glass herself, she thinks. She wonders with each step if she will shatter against the earth.
For a girl who had never felt true fear, this is exactly how she had imagined it. Or dreamt of it in her all-too-real nightmares, anyway.
Ethenia runs until she forgets why she is running to begin with. At first, it was because he had told her to. Then, it was simply because it felt good to stretch her long legs and wind through the maze of the forest. Time, and miles, melted away as though she could run straight through the years themselves, up into the sky and away with the stars, at last. But she could not, of course, and she begins to tire as any other mortal creature would. The delicate mare can feel the once crisp air become hot and constricting in her lungs, gasping like a fish out of water, unable to take in the oxygen quick enough. The boa constrictor at her throat insists that she slows, and so she does.
The forest that had wrapped its fingers thick around her seemed to release her like a gasp. She finds a small clearing, exhaling into it like a hummingbird to a flower. Ethenia looks upward, searching for the moon. She cannot quite make it out through the looming canopy, but she sees just enough light to know it is there. She can hear just enough deafening silence to know that something else is there, too.
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