She bends toward home. Perhaps it is because she was born in one. A home defined by place, by smell and by sights familiar from birthing; defined by the intimacy of love, the soft whuffing of her mother in the night. It had been slow to occur to her how dangerous home had been. When she was a babe, she was separated from the second soul by an uncomfortable and disagreeable berth. It had taken them time to become accustomed to the feeling of each other’s invasion. It had taken them time to accept that it was no invasion at all. But the jungle had scared that other soul; it sent sharp, pleading stabs – like an electric spark on the tip of her nose – and screamed ‘hide’ and ‘find cover’.
But her screams were just whispers against the taut of the filly’s eardrum, and the sensation of electricity had impressed Longear only once or twice. Then she learned to ignore all the kit’s agitation.
Neither of them like to be ignored. The other soul sought to take its own liberties in revenge. And then, one day, the process of welding them together completed. They settled into each other’s skin and minds and control. Like home.
Home is many-faced and wide. She had left her home, wrecked and ravaged by war, because it lost something that could not be mended around. The roots had been pulled when her brother had failed his first breath and Vineine had been scorned by the Mother. She left, and from them – Fang, Fiero, Longear – she siphoned home.
They left the jungle. She had not been sad, that was for another day.
The next step was here. Where Fiero had met Vineine. Where Vineine had stopped by, in transit to the place she was certain was home. Where she had birthed Viera and conceived Tryst. Where footprints made swirls of history and destiny in the dust; the shades of Longear’s origination were scraped into the understory of the Amazons, by hoof and claw, but here also. Her father and mother; her grandparents, Magnus and Joelle; a long time ago, Elladora had loved a man who called this place home.
She comes in a slow lope, standing on her hind end now and then to sniff the air. She is lighter like this, keeping soft-footed on the surface of the snow. Even here, her wild, agouti coat is fuzzier than normal. Unlike normal, she bulges and rounds. It is all stranger still for the other soul. She would have dropped her kits months ago – the foals needed a much longer time to gestate. Soon, she would have to abandon this lapine and stay in her equine form until their birth – one of her babes complied itself to her phasing, the other was larger. No, not rabbit at all. Perhaps, more like its father, so that pup would be too big.
She stays around the perimeter, a common kind of etiquette. In a smooth, instantaneous reform, she changes to her more approachable form. Short and somewhat stocky, fuzzy and round. The grey mare peers around for the comfort of her father and brother (for her mother, always), her odd, over-large cottontail still.
@[Fiero]
“My heart has joined the Thousand,
for my friend stopped running today.”