Agnieszka
Wane is not there when she crests the ridge, her head is fuzzy and heavy, exhaustion tugging her lids down over her amethyst eyes. She is never aware that she falls asleep.
Awakening beneath the tree beside the black heart of the isle she wickers in a forlorn way for her misplaced companion. He has not made it to the pond or the ice encased tree. Heart pounding--trees are her least favorite flora--she walks out from beneath the tree and away from the danger of falling ice. At least for now. She watches others deliberate on how they will bear their spinels of ice back to the mountain, while others still dive right in and carry away their prizes in teeth that will hurt like cracked bone by the time they reach their destination.
Rounding the tree, listening to the others, to the chiming of ice, she examines the cedar’s heavy branches. She notices that many of the icicles contain spines of the cedar’s green needles, skeletons within the rippling spires. She had thought to just fall in with someone else and help them bear their load, but the more they returned with the better, right?
So, after careful and cautious inspection Agnieszka approaches the tree and reaches up among its branches for particular thin limb that she can gnaw through. She has carefully selected it for its abundance of “skeleton” icicles.
However it is not to be as simple as that. As she extends her muzzle up into the tree another of the small group attacks the cedar to loosen some of its icy spires. There is only a chime of warning before a handful of spikes hurtle down on the tobiano mare in glittering fury. Of course the first strikes her face, leaving behind a gash on her right cheek just below the old scar. Another slams into her left hip, glancing but heavy. A third impales itself behind her right shoulder, piercing her hide and sticking there, perhaps to melt. It is all she can do not to panic and flee.
Blood drips down her leg and pools around her hoof in the snow but she returns to her task, breathing hard, struggling to keep her mind quiet.
The cedar sap is strange on her tongue, bitter, but she tears the branch away from the trunk. It is only a few feet long, not even as thick at is widest part as a foal’s leg. Once safely out from beneath the cedar she lifts the branch over the back of her own neck, so that it curves along and over the arc. Some icicles fall but many remain, supported by the green scaffolding encased in the ice. The end of the frozen branch rests against her withers. She will have to tuck her chin a little awkwardly to keep it in place, but this way she can carry the branch and the icicles back to the mainland and hopefully at least one or two will arrive at the mountain.
The storm is gone, but she is slowed, limping, though her movement is not impeded pain is radiating down her right foreleg. She should have pulled out the icicle that pierced her behind the shoulder but now she must hold onto her branch and it isn’t possible.
Saltwater stings her wounds. She is wild eyed with fear when her treacherous mind summons up images of creatures drawn to the coppery tang of her blood in the dark water. Later she will be grateful for the strange rest on the island that gives her the energy to swim hard back towards the mainland, but while in the water she can only think to hurry because something may be preparing to drag her beneath and keep her from the shore and from Wane. She knows all too well what kind of monsters might like to drown and consume her.
In Nerine again she longs to stop as before, even just to let down her branch and roll herself dry in the dark sand but water is dripping from the frozen branch and she eyes it only for a moment before snorting heavily and urging herself into a smooth four-beat trot that she hopes she can maintain all the way.
From Nerine she skirts the Taiga, avoiding the forest as best she possibly can, but she is breathing hard when she crosses the river into Hyaline. Without Wane beside her the trees loom forbiddingly and she cannot get away from them quickly enough.
In the mountainous kingdom she is cautious, somehow it’s even more silent here than before. She does not see anyone this time, but is certain she is watched as she skirts the lake and trots south along the river. The bleeding has stopped, though her face, hip, and right leg are rusty and stained now. The ice on her branch begins to crack and shift. The icicle skeletons still seem to be holding, but for how long?
She loses some of them on the climb up the mountain. This last arduous leg far harder now than when she was fresh and climbing up beside a friend. Ice shatters on rock but she does not look down or back only grits her teeth--jaw sore, muscles locked--around the scaly branch and keeps climbing.
On the high mountain she finally stops, there is no way to climb higher. Here she gingerly lays her branch down, trying hard not to look on it and see if she has failed. A shiver, exhaustion and cold, passes through her and from behind her shoulder a small bloodied stiletto of ice drops down among the cedar branch’s fronds, the last of the icicle that made her journey so painful.
an unequaled gift for disaster
