02-04-2018, 08:39 PM
The only thing that Lepis knows is darkness. She has spun and twirled and danced within her mother’s womb, but it was always in darkness. The strength of the walls that held her have been impenetrable (she has given her more dam more than the usual number of kicks). As she grows, she comes more and more frustrated at her captivity, at the inability to move as she pleases. Her frustration is strong, strong enough to press into her mother, if only Heda was willing to feel it.
The frustration ceases only when the darkness changes. Before, her hooved onslaught had summoned no reaction from her dark prison. It had held firm despite her efforts. Yet now, things are changing. She feels squeezed, pressed, and she struggles to position herself in a way that is least painful.
Lepis soon regrets that as well, because now she her body is pressed as though between a vice. It is worst on her outstretched legs, and then around her nose. The pressure works its way down her body, and as it goes she realizes that those worst press parts of her are now free.
Free, free, truly free!
Her front hooves flail, breaking the last remnant of her prison, and her round eyes blink open to light for the first time. It burns, too bright, and she longs for an instant for the darkness of her prison. That lasts only an instant, because she is distracted by the novel sensation of air in her lungs, and then by the wind against her pale sides, and then by the way her foreleg is pressed against a tussock of grass.
She is still sorting through these things, flat on her side, when Heda touches her. The shadow is new as well, and the relief it offers her from the bright sun overhead in represented in the brilliant smile on her face as she twists her head to look up. Mother, she knows, and love, she feels. Lepis rolls to her knees, and she might be content to stay that way a while. But Mother encourages her to stand, and she does not want to disappoint her.
First she attempts to rise with her hind legs. It works, but the canine palay-bow she imitates is difficult to rise from. So she tries her front legs. Wavering, she hold herself upright with her hindlegs tucked beneath her and looks to Mother for approval. This isn’t quite right, she knows, so she pushes up one hind leg.
Unceremonously, she collapses back to the ground.
Lepis sighs, looks at the clover next to her nose, and tries again.
She loses count (mostly because she cannot count at all yet) but eventually she has risen - unsteadily - to her feet. It takes several more tries before she can take a step, and even more before she can walk across the distance to her mother and drink her fill of her first meal. When she does, she turns to press her pale face to Heda’s buckskin side. She sighs happily, projecting the same love that her Mother had. A feather from Heda’s navy wing tickles at her pale nose, and Lepis sneezes.
The frustration ceases only when the darkness changes. Before, her hooved onslaught had summoned no reaction from her dark prison. It had held firm despite her efforts. Yet now, things are changing. She feels squeezed, pressed, and she struggles to position herself in a way that is least painful.
Lepis soon regrets that as well, because now she her body is pressed as though between a vice. It is worst on her outstretched legs, and then around her nose. The pressure works its way down her body, and as it goes she realizes that those worst press parts of her are now free.
Free, free, truly free!
Her front hooves flail, breaking the last remnant of her prison, and her round eyes blink open to light for the first time. It burns, too bright, and she longs for an instant for the darkness of her prison. That lasts only an instant, because she is distracted by the novel sensation of air in her lungs, and then by the wind against her pale sides, and then by the way her foreleg is pressed against a tussock of grass.
She is still sorting through these things, flat on her side, when Heda touches her. The shadow is new as well, and the relief it offers her from the bright sun overhead in represented in the brilliant smile on her face as she twists her head to look up. Mother, she knows, and love, she feels. Lepis rolls to her knees, and she might be content to stay that way a while. But Mother encourages her to stand, and she does not want to disappoint her.
First she attempts to rise with her hind legs. It works, but the canine palay-bow she imitates is difficult to rise from. So she tries her front legs. Wavering, she hold herself upright with her hindlegs tucked beneath her and looks to Mother for approval. This isn’t quite right, she knows, so she pushes up one hind leg.
Unceremonously, she collapses back to the ground.
Lepis sighs, looks at the clover next to her nose, and tries again.
She loses count (mostly because she cannot count at all yet) but eventually she has risen - unsteadily - to her feet. It takes several more tries before she can take a step, and even more before she can walk across the distance to her mother and drink her fill of her first meal. When she does, she turns to press her pale face to Heda’s buckskin side. She sighs happily, projecting the same love that her Mother had. A feather from Heda’s navy wing tickles at her pale nose, and Lepis sneezes.
