02-24-2025, 05:15 PM
There was one beautiful, blessed thing about the close of summer and the coming of autumn - the daylight hours grew shorter. Lait did not outright despise the sun, enjoying the warmth and light it provided as much as any rational equine. It was the side effects that its rays had on her body that had the young mare scowling at cloudless days. Her coat color was problem enough, the lack of pigment in her skin and eyes causing them to burn and sting if the light was bright enough. But the fairies in their wisdom had decided to work a third consequence of sun exposure into her blood - phosphorescence. Even if she sought to limit time spent out and about during the day, what little sun she got while simply doing daily tasks was enough to activate her gift come nightfall. The glow made her conspicuous, in a way that the more "gifted" inhabitants of Beqanna simply were not. Feathered wings, fiery breath, sharp fangs, spiraling horns and cat's eyes - these features were outside the equine norm if her parents' tales of other realms were to be believed, but with them one could still hide. They were blessings that did not rob you of the safety of the shadows, of the quiet and peace promised by darkness. They were not beacons, drawing unwanted attention and pulling her into confrontation.
The downsides of autumn? Falling temperatures, for one - Lait, with her sleek, lean build, was a creature made for far warmer climates than the one she currently found herself in. Summer had been easy enough to deal with. She had kept to the river running through Beqanna's heart, using its waters to slake her thirst and sheltering under the great oak's branches during the heat of the day. There was no such easy solution for dealing with the cold. Try as it might, her coat simply could not grow in thick enough to stave off the chill. Even now forage and still-running water were becoming harder to find. Most mornings she either had to go to a section of the fast-flowing rapids to drink, which opened her to the dangers of falling in and being swept away, or she had to paw and scrape at the ice until she made a large enough hole from which to drink. The dwindling of edible grasses had forced her to leave the river's environs for the unfortunately more populated meadow. The cremello mare had expected trouble when she had first set up camp, keeping her head on a swivel and her body tensed to flee. As of yet, none had bothered her. The few that had met her pale stare quickly found something else to occupy themselves with. Whether it was her odd, jumpy demeanor that kept them away or that they too had little desire to engage in conversation she was not sure.
Nightfall found her head lowered and her nose to the ground, trying to pull a few more mouthfuls of grass before she bedded down for at least a few hours. The past few days had been oddly quiet and the couple of horses she'd seen had been from a distance. Things were peaceful, in a way they'd not been since she was little. Without realizing it she'd lowered her guard, spending more time out and about past dark, where before she would have hightailed it to the stand of trees she'd camped out in as soon as the sun began to set. Sudden light overhead - beautiful, brilliant, shifting reds and oranges that put her own soft light to shame - startled her. Her head shot upward and she jumped, letting out an undignified screech. There was no time for embarrassment or fear to set in, not when awe flooded her system. Overhead circled a great burning bird - no, not just burning, but seemingly made of crackling flame, every flap of its wings shedding crackling embers. The song that came from its open beak hurt to hear. It was her mother's kind eyes, her father's smile, her brother's laughter. It was their absence, too, the agonizing thought that she would never see them again. Lait could no more look away than she could join it in the sky, wide eyes following the phoenix's flight as tears trailed down her cheeks.
(ooc: this is my first post in several years. please be gentle • ^ •人)
lait
a soft light in the dark