Child she may be, Briella lays there: knees bent and legs tucked beneath her small body, beneath the weakened and plague-ridden frame. Her eyes are wide with wonder and she listens to the shrill wind as it echoes through crevice and caverns- through the narrow passages and all the sharp angles of the imperious mountain. Her ears perk and flicker and she listens to call of the wind as it wraps around her body and blows through the soft fur and hair: cradling her chin like a finger… and she rises, wobbly and sore: still resting from her big journey prior. Again, however, she walks to the top of the mountain, to the platform where she sees them in their impossible perfect and brilliance- and she cries out with joy, with hope.
“Fairies!” she is innocent, naive, and tender. Her voice delicate, and yet she herself is lost in the awe she takes in as she watches the faces of them and all the range of emotion they display. There is a sudden sadness, a fear: perhaps a sense of shame as she looks at them and mumbles a very low whisper. “I’m sorry, did I do something? I just want to help.” she’s more eloquent now, but speaking only briefly and she watches as the group begins to settle and soon other horses come forward.
Of the Fairies gathered, the speaker is new and perhaps more frightening to her than she wants to admit: with a voice that speaks as coldly as the wind she’d endured in the Isle and a fortitude about himself so much like the glaciers she’d passed. For a moment she finds concern, shrinking in his presence and slowly bending down until as before, she lay watching- listening and head low… trying to hide herself perhaps from his apparent frustration while still minding each word and instruction. Briella murmurs, whispers rather than speaks out loud. “I can be brave,” she tries to assure herself and the Fairies.
“Oh, I know that place.” and as she grows into silence, Briella recalls the path- the trail and the way: the tiny footsteps left in the earth and snow… and all the journey she’d made before. Her gaze deviates to look for the blue and gold fairy, for the bangles that rattled and the jewels that shone: and if she can find her, than Briella smiles timidly- nodding appreciatively and with a weak, but, present confidence. “Okay, I’ll go back. Going to help, promise!” if she has drawn ire, she does not know; but she rises slowly and steps backward- surveying the mountain path and idly looking between the rocks and grasses- the ice that darkens the stone.
They are gone in a rain of bright and brilliant sparks, vanished and without any trace… and yet, she has no issue with this: it is simply something she accepts. Perhaps in her own mind, having grown in the Den and raised by the Fairies- she is more forgiving and willing, more trustful overall; but no matter she begins to descend the mountain and turns at the head of the path. “Please come with, I know the lake! I promise!” if they listen, she cannot say.
Who would, after all, listen to a lone weanling?
Yet she does not wait either and she walks along the hardened soil and it’s frozen rocks- along the path where drifts of snow form and blanket the dangerous edges. Slow and cautious of the cracks, she minds the sound of rocks above her head and the shrill winds as they batter her body. The cold is something she has not truly grown used too, but, winter has at least brought on a thicker coat and the sooty child with her flaxen mane and tail is fluffier now: the frost touching the edges of her fur but not penetrating to the skin.
Briella coughs, her nose twitching as trickles of blood drip down, and she whimpers a moment as the familiar weight and heaviness in her lungs returns; but she cannot fail, she cannot stop- and her hooves leave small impressions with each continuous step. Winding and spiraling she finds herself stepping over logs fallen and frozen, sliding between rocks where-in the path shrinks and narrows. Once or twice she has to stop, all to survey the distance down the mountain that remains, and as if guided by familiar knowledge she goes on until she reaches the base: stands and peers out- studying the vast cross-section where the edges of Hyaline and the Forest lay beyond the River.
“Okay, I’m gonna go through Hyaline to the Taiga and then Nerine: Loess is pretty, but, it’s a really long path and Hyaline has more water and greens still growing. Yeah, it’s a better choice.” she nods as if it is accepted truth, and looks back to whomever has followed: to any who entertained the weanling.
If there are none, she only looks down in quiet sorrow- her mind recalling the first time she made the journey and how dangerous it had been.
“I want to help.” she chokes back a sob.
For her, she continues: moving along the rocky edges of the icy bank and to the place where the quick moving river cuts through Beqanna. Her gaze lingers on the flow and she starts upward, moving north and not crossing just yet. Rather she walks with her own confidence, and there is something almost devoted about it, continuing along the bank where mud is gray and brown- a slurry of frigid algae and rock, and ice patches the areas between the stones. Shining and at times glittering with the sunlight that bears down through the cloudless sky.
Though it is winter the upper edges of the banks are covered in greenery and weeds, uneven due to rock and the mountainous setting, and she finally leaves the lower portion of the bank when there is a moment where the river is not so swift.
Wood and mud have been bound together, and strange furred creatures pat away and swim freely, the flow of water present but weakened and Briella is quick to lunge forward and cross. Frigid, she feels the shock of it: the chill that runs through her legs and brushes her chest and belly- it’s like knives driven into her skin, something so alarming she gasps… not screams, but gasps: and coughs soon after, her legs steady as she pulls herself onto the opposing bank and begins to shake and shiver.
To the furry builders, she looks: watches and observes. The teeth are yellow and strange, their limbs backing hooves and possessing only claw and toes: webbing between and some tail that looks more like wood attached to their body. She is awe of them, astounded and curious; but she cannot linger and so Briella instead goes on- begins to retrace step and path- to walk with a bounce here and there, even as she shakes and coughs: her tiny body wracked with fever and pain.
Through crag and rock she saunters on with her gaze peering at the leafless and barren cherry trees, the hardy red maple even absent these things; but there is an irony that the purple wisteria and pale baby’s breath remains: the coniferous trees are richly green and their sweet cones… still on the branches. Waxy and sharp, the pine-scent is strong and more so as they pass beneath the trees and along the river where in Hyaline seems to be in bloom.
Hunger has not truly touched her since the disease was contracted, and yet, Briella forces them to stop: nibbles on clover and grass, and urges them as well to do the same. Water, no matter how cold, is welcome and the filly notes the slow moving fish and their dark scales- the crawdads in their mud holes and all the frogs bedding into the murk and mud.
In her distraction, she is in total and undeniable veneration of the world, and she manages a tender whisper as her own reflection takes form before her… a thing which had always been there, but, was only recently noticed. “I don’t know if you can hear me, or if you’re listening; but it’ll be okay Fairies. I’m really good at remembering the way! I can help, I’m gonna help! Just make sure my Dad and Aunt are okay please. I really love them, and I miss them; but they’re very sick. Gotta make them better.”
In her mind she considers Dovev and Heartfire, she thinks of the worry and panic- the fear she holds in losing them: and she whimpers at the idea of it.
Still, she presses on, and thinks about her reflection quietly, and to herself, the image of her own face was thinner than it had been and more sunken in- her eyes duller and there was a distinct sort of stain on her maw where blood had been trickling from the nostrils with every sneeze and cough. She tries to suppress them, to stop herself as she walks beneath tree and through bushes: as she tastes the coppery… metallic blood on her lips. Determined and focus, Briella notes the way the river widens: how the water becomes infinitely clear and she notices sometimes different.
A clear sheen of ice reflects on the surface of the wide lake. Temptation comes and goes, her body weaving through tall grass and close to shore as she notices the fading daylight and and the sky darkening. Night time approaches, and she stares up at the wine-dark sky and the graying clouds on its edges: all the starlight that glistens and shimmers, mily stretches of something she does not know the word for- all above and around her and the party she may or may not have gathered.
Alive in the lake, there are frog calls and ripples, splashing fish and ice cracking where turtles and other life slithers beneath the depths to escape the wintry breath that begins to bellow and breathe through the vast expanse of Hyaline. The dark is not a thing that frightens her so much anymore, but, they are creatures of mortal binds and she knows exhaustion as it slithers through her petite and childish body. So she goes to a tree where wind cannot batter her and rests: lays and stretches amidst the grasses.
“Rest,” she speaks to them, and leaves it to others to listen: or to do as they wish; but Briella sleeps.
A dream, however, is absent from her mind and instead she hears the sound of coughing and struggling breath: she hears the death-rattle and reverberation of a familiar voice as the picture forms. Dovev, bony and skeletal, lays in blood and Pangean soil- insides spilled upon the ground and lesions so deep on the flesh that flies had lain maggot and begun to feast: he rots, dying painfully and slowly. Heartfire too, is in this awful nightmare, and she sees the roan mare impaled upon a grotesque and bloody rock: sharp and impossibly tall. Her blood and organs have dripped, viscera and gore as abundant as the rusty colors of the land around her.
In her mind she can see Carnage, awful and yet remarkable: the gray and astral markings strange to her, and more so the fact that he seems somehow larger and stronger- he seems tall. She hears the bellow cries of his name in the mesa and plateaus; but alarmingly she sees other bodies scattered about… Woolf, Leilan, Thorgal, Rey, Phasus, Bruise, Niklas- everyone. She feels the sudden knot in her belly and the fear increasing as the wicked God turns his eyes onto her and she hears his terrible voice in her subconscious- panic, and fury in her mind.
“You could have saved them, but you failed. You didn’t help, you caused this: all of it.” and in what may’ve been in attempt to stand up and defend herself: she instead feels her heart shattering in her chest, feels the soul unweaving as Dovev… in his final words, speaks.
“You failed kid, we’re all dead. I should’ve left you in the river.” harsh and enough to provoke her: a wailing cry filling the air.
When she wakes, her eyes shoot open and her body trembles from fever and fear: she cries, panics and breathes so rapidly that the coughing is sudden and strong. Wracked with pain and a deep feeling of remorse and misery she cries, tears in her eyes and pressure building as Briella chokes and whimpers… as she tries to speak and stutters: stammers. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry- I wanted to help. I didn’t know it was me, I’m sorry. Please don’t leave me. Dovev, Heartfire- please.”
Its agonizing, her legs brought over her face and tears left to fall as she sobs and wails- as Briella is consumed by the nightmare and by her fear.
Strength comes later, when she rises in a state of emotional numbness and exhaustion- when she thinks of how Heartfire had sought to protect her and how Dovev had always called her ‘his’... how each cared and each worried; but most of all she recalls their silent promises and moments.
She has to succeed.
North from Hyaline is the Taiga and Briella knows it well, well enough that she steps into the mist and fog: into the redwoods without fear or ceremony. She cares little for the moving of shadows near bushes and at the base of the great trees: instead keeps her eyes on the soil until at long last she sees it… scratch marks.
Lines drawn in the soil remain and she sees another series ahead, scratching them herself and matching sizes with her own hoof. “I came this way.” she states plainly before following the scratches, walking along the wood and rock: the trees and all their great might. The dawn in the Taiga is strange and the light barely breaks the great canopy of dismal mist lingering on the ground. Yet, she knows it is a boring journey, one without many obstacles sans the predators that dwell within. So she listens, waits for an opportune moment and then speaks: just loud enough to be heard.
“The first time I came through here, it was like this too. Fog, not much light, and I think there less of a chill in the air. I kept seeing things moving in the corner of my eye, and I think the forest spirits were just really curious about why people were suddenly coming back in really big numbers. Maybe they liked it quiet? I don’t know, but, I thought I saw one and it was really pretty. It had big antlers and really pretty white fur, and it looked a little bit like a deer but its face was too long and the antlers were really different… oh, and it was taller, and really fat.” she nods to herself, thinking of the moose-entity she’d seen.
“Maybe if we’re lucky, we’ll see it? I hope so.” simply put she keeps on- circling a tree every now and again with a laughter and joy indicated by the little play she has: and the light is brighter now and the fog is broken easier to show the path of scratches the filly has stuck into the earth. Time passes as they go, and when night fades, they have stepped beyond the Taiga and into the southernmost edge of Nerine.
She’s joyous- laughing and excited: “I lived here for a little bit!” chirping and quick she races through tall grass and brush: pushes on through the rock hills and spare trees. The smell of sea is on the wind; but there is an earthiness to it as well, and Briella leaps and jumps: springs forward over the logs as she stops to look back and see if any followed and how many. But her ears flicker at the dull ebb and flow of the tide, at the waves crashing on distance cliffs and she chews on grasses sweetened and salty in flavor.
The stars are so strong that all of Nerine is visible in its glory, the cloudless and dark sky brilliant and painted with a myriad of lights. Purple and blue, deep green- all colors stretch across the sky, and there is an eagerness she has to find a certain tree: a long redwood that has grown beyond the fact that it shouldn’t have, and truthfully if should’ve been left in the Taiga. It bent and broken, rotting and mouldy in smell: mushrooms grow rampant and brush too, forms around it.
Amidst the wreck she nestles into moss and leaves: into the v-shaped section of the broken tree.
Sleep, she sleeps: and Briella dreams, but, she cannot remember when her eyes open- when she looks to the warm sun and cloudy sky: the white puffs so large and marshmallow like that she wonders: she stares, and she chirps happily- naming shapes.
“Rabbit, tree, wolf, me? Oh, that’s a duck.” innocent, soft, and naive; but adamant in her path and journey as she continues pushing through the vast wilds of Nerine.
It is easy to guide them across uneven soil, over rock and branches: through clovers and around briers where rabbits have long made the earth into a warren; but the uneasy part is when they reach the cliffs and Briella stares down at the rocks. Icy and frost have formed, and the sea form has made them seemingly worse now; but the water is risen and where as she once saw low tide: now she saw the height of it.
Nearly to the edge of the water she blinks and studies it, considers the frost on the ground and paces a moment before noting the ice not so far out: the glacial blue and green… and chunks that have begin to form patches as thick and wide as the fields they’d crossed.
Hesitation is a quality she lacks and with impulsive thought she leaps forward and dives into the water: swimming suddenly and pushing towards the ice. Frigid and painful the crushing pressure feels like hell on her heavy lungs and Briella chokes, coughs, and feels herself struggling to breathe; but she must. Pins and needles, cold-electricity, her skin is full of sensory provocation and her mind threatens to be overloaded as every synapse goes off at once.
Dark and deep, impossibly green and blue: she floats and swims, not showing fear of the ocean and its ancient and timeless form. Briella sees silvery fins and shadows, she knows the fish and the dolphins: the breaching creatures that leap upward and splash down violently. They swim close, but, not close enough to touch and she can hear chattering and chirping as she kicks and continues: drives herself into something… alarms her.
Not far off she sees the dark eyes and familiar wolfish-almost feline face, the nostrils that sneeze water and the teeth that are revealed by the pink mouth and wide jaws. Massive and elongated it swims close but stops before going under and Briella feels it bump her side: her body pushed and moved off path as she struggles to get back to it.
The Leopard Seal surfaces again, studying her with interest; but it fades at the white and black movement beneath the water: a penguin zipping by.
Briella pulls herself onto the ice, watches as the Seal returns and swims close: her eyes locked as the enormous predator holds the struggling bird, and she does not understand why it drops it at her feet: why it stares at her when the penguin slips back into the water… and the Seal darts down to retrieve it again.
She watches the cycle in repetition: the bird growing tired and inevitably brought to her bloody and ruined: flesh bitten and the bones crushed… she sniffs it, and the Seal seems more pleased as she lowers her mouth and pretends to bite at the corpse. Though she does not bite, nor eat, she noticed the creature disappear into the water: chasing penguin and biting viciously as it drags another in a similar state to her.
Briella wonders, for a moment, if this creature knows that she is not its own species or offspring; but Briella can only wait until it goes back into the sea... aware of the corpses piling up.
Without continuing to linger more than she can, she turns and walks, the ice mostly silent aside from shrill wind and the bizarre crackling that echoes and fades. There, on the shore: she sees the frozen pathways and and plains: the trail she once made, frozen and filling with new snow.
“Okay, mostly done.” she blinks, looking around.