07-30-2016, 07:44 PM
It had been easy to slip away from the Tundra, easy to disappear through the narrow ice gate without anyone noticing. There were just so many new faces and they kept mother hidden away up the mountain and father almost constantly tied up. It seemed strange that her parents had found each other, that they worked so well together, because to an outsider they were so very different. Offspring loved his kingdom, he loved his people and there was nothing he wouldn’t do to protect them. He was often among them, teaching them or answering questions, sorting out the new alliances and the cave-guard. But mother was different. It wasn’t that she didn’t love the tundra, that she didn’t love those who called the northern kingdom their home, she just- they affected her differently. Isle had never learned to control her mindreading, she had spent too much time trying to suppress it, so with this many new horses milling together within the ice walls, mother became a ghost. So when she disappeared through the gate it was to be totally alone, and she was certain no one had noticed her go, no one except maybe Nevi. Nevi saw everything.
She followed the network of streams to the meadow, followed them further to disappear among the trees that edged such open places. While she had no fear of the wide open - home felt as open as the sky, like a reflection of settled cloud-drifts - she just wanted something different, something less-same. From the mountains above the Tundra, she could occasionally see these streams in a flash of light, and they reminded her of veins cut through a frost-soaked leaf. For a moment she closes her eyes to picture them in her head, unraveling the tangles of silver until she could almost picture how far she had come. It was hard though when she had nothing to compare it to, when this was her first time here. She had only ever visited the Chamber and her surrounding forests.
So with a sigh she draws to a halt, turning her dark face away from the stream and letting those bright eyes adjust to the half-dark. She can’t see anything besides the trees, can’t hear anything besides the creak of cold branches and the chirp of stubborn bird. But she can feel something, a strange pull that spans the length of a single heartbeat before it ends with a resounding crash. The crash is a sound she knows well, the sound ice makes when icicles fall from the mouth of a cave, the sound ice makes when it explodes against the ground.
It shouldn’t make her curious, not when it’s something she’s so familiar with, but it does. It does, and so her long legs slip back into easy motion, finding no awkwardness in the weight of the snow she sinks into. When she turns a bend, weaving quietly between the tall pines, her eyes settle abruptly on a red-violet figure standing in a puddle of sunlight with ice scattered like diamonds at his feet. It is strange, so strange, but she cannot stop the bubble of quiet laughter that tips from her lips. It seems that even when she is away from home and looking for something less-same, the same will always find her. She eases to a halt, leaning the brown dapples of her shoulder against the trunk of a nearby tree to watch him a moment before saying, “Haven’t you ever seen ice before?” But there is only warmth in the brown and white of her heavy face, only bright leaking from the dark eyes watching him with such quiet curiosity.
She followed the network of streams to the meadow, followed them further to disappear among the trees that edged such open places. While she had no fear of the wide open - home felt as open as the sky, like a reflection of settled cloud-drifts - she just wanted something different, something less-same. From the mountains above the Tundra, she could occasionally see these streams in a flash of light, and they reminded her of veins cut through a frost-soaked leaf. For a moment she closes her eyes to picture them in her head, unraveling the tangles of silver until she could almost picture how far she had come. It was hard though when she had nothing to compare it to, when this was her first time here. She had only ever visited the Chamber and her surrounding forests.
So with a sigh she draws to a halt, turning her dark face away from the stream and letting those bright eyes adjust to the half-dark. She can’t see anything besides the trees, can’t hear anything besides the creak of cold branches and the chirp of stubborn bird. But she can feel something, a strange pull that spans the length of a single heartbeat before it ends with a resounding crash. The crash is a sound she knows well, the sound ice makes when icicles fall from the mouth of a cave, the sound ice makes when it explodes against the ground.
It shouldn’t make her curious, not when it’s something she’s so familiar with, but it does. It does, and so her long legs slip back into easy motion, finding no awkwardness in the weight of the snow she sinks into. When she turns a bend, weaving quietly between the tall pines, her eyes settle abruptly on a red-violet figure standing in a puddle of sunlight with ice scattered like diamonds at his feet. It is strange, so strange, but she cannot stop the bubble of quiet laughter that tips from her lips. It seems that even when she is away from home and looking for something less-same, the same will always find her. She eases to a halt, leaning the brown dapples of her shoulder against the trunk of a nearby tree to watch him a moment before saying, “Haven’t you ever seen ice before?” But there is only warmth in the brown and white of her heavy face, only bright leaking from the dark eyes watching him with such quiet curiosity.