show me the way, i tire of child's play

[Leokadia]

ashes, ashes,
we. all. fall. down.

Leokadia is big enough now (in her opinion) that she can wander all of Beqanna by herself. There might be places that the adults in her life would not want her to go but she doesn’t ask for permission. In fact she has not returned to Jayhawk’s side for days and has no immediate plans to do so. The woman had adopted her and been kind but Lo felt only the mildest attachment to the appaloosa mare. Jayhawk came for her, and did not forget her and for that the girl would always consider her to be her mother but now that she didn’t see a need for the shelter and protection a parent provided she rather preferred roaming on her own.  

The cremello filly crosses into Pangea heedlessly. She is confident that for now she is only a child wandering and could choke on her breath as if with tears and pretend to be lost if someone were upset to find her where she isn’t meant to be. It does not occur to her that someone might want to harm her in the way she often wants to harm smaller things. That someone might want to bite her like she wants to bite Jayhawk’s children, little Jenelly and Gato. 

On creamy hooves she trots through the lowlands along the banks of a wide grey river, splashing through a silty tributary and setting her sights on a rocky outcropping that looks good for jumping off of and exercising her finally usable wings. She’s a nearly white beacon of filly, and will not go unnoticed for long, but she moves with a foolhardy confidence focused on her target. Bounding up the rocky incline was easy on her now long legs. Her creamy white wings flare wide before she reaches the ledge and she stands there like a vulture peering down on the river bottomed canyon with eyes like ice chips. 

Beneath and above her the land is bleached and yet living. The girl is too young to recognize that nothing should grow in the salt-saturated ground. Things do grow, and in whorls red stained earth that she dismisses as geological anomalies, not recognizing them for what they are. One day she will, once she has killed, once she has stained herself the way the land in Pangea is stained. Perhaps that day will come sooner because she has trespassed here.

Leokadia