[open] a cold wind's whispering - any

[Heloise]

A COLD WIND'S WHISPERING SECRETS IN YOUR EAR. She knew she’d been actively avoiding this place.  Home.  If she could even call it that. It was her birthplace, sure, but she’d never felt home anywhere save for the skies.  She let out a small huff from her perch on the lowest branch of a bare oak.  She wasn’t sure why she’d come back, but blamed it on the fact she’d spent so much time in avian form.  Birds always instinctually came home. And now so had she. She had no fond memories of this place. There was no nostalgia. There had been nothing for here here. Even though she’d been born of two mares, she’d never had a mother. Beady eyes did their best to make sense of this place which had once been familiar.  These were not the lands that she remembered, but deep down she knew this to be her birthplace.  She shifted her raven wings before taking another deep breath. She hadn’t returned to her equine form in years, and to say she was nervous to do so was an understatement.  She shifted on the branch, visibly uncomfortable, before stepping off the edge.  She closed her eyes as she fell, but the impact with the ground never came.  Instead, bones shifted and splintered - growing in both size and mass. She took an unsteady step forward, again walking on four legs. It was disorienting for a moment as she became accustomed to her natural mass.  The strange feeling passed quickly, and she grew more confident with each step.  In the back of her mind, she’d wondered if she’d been seen...but in the grand scheme of things she didn’t care either way. H E L O I S E