[complete] I have presents

[ceris]

Ceris should not have roamed this far alone but she has a mother who does not care.

Somewhere along the route to the Den, the girl had gotten misplaced and nobody had bothered to go looking for her. (It was all the same in the end to Allora – whether it be the little foal’s father or the faeries or a passerby, somebody else would take the child.) So she wanders aimlessly, her spindly legs carrying her through the open fields and the newly-minted meadows lush with spring grass.

(Not that she knows this. All Ceris knows is that she is hungry, and that staying still doesn’t seem help the gnawing in her belly.)

So she walks and walks and walks until a voice rings out against the stones that surround her. There is the sound of crushed rock under her dainty hooves and the young pegasus turns to see a small creature in the early morning light. His voice calls out – to her? – and so she lowers her petite head to ground, flaring her dark wings wide in warning. (She doesn’t know why she does this, either. It’s instinct, she’ll later learn. She only knows in this moment to appear bigger than she actually is.)

Until she spies the pile of oddities beside him, something far more intriguing at this moment than her own self-preservation.

"Present.” She mimics back to the strange animal, lisping it out through baby fangs, her very first word.