04-19-2019, 12:30 AM
Enough was enough. It was past time for me to leave the safety of Tephra’s borders and get to know the world I lived in. Aurora, my mother, would’ve said there wasn’t any rush - plenty of horrible things going on in the East without me trying to find them - then again she’d been gone for over a year now anyways. Probably used those sparkling wings of hers to flap right out of the Plague and keep from getting it herself.
As I plodded tirelessly along Hyaline’s lower border through the edge of the Forest, I tried to tell myself that even if I had wings I wouldn’t have followed her. Catching the Plague had been something unavoidable since I’d been born, no matter how many times Elis had turned her healing magic on me to make us better. If I had fluttered after her towards the sea that night she disappeared, I might as well have taken death along with me wherever we would’ve ended up. Nah, there wasn’t anything better out there that I couldn’t find here, and I was determined to prove as much to myself by taking the journey of a lifetime across the heart of Beqanna.
I’d rest in the Meadow and then go directly to the Field: I’d told myself that a hundred times over. Make something of myself. It didn’t really cross my mind that my pseudo-family wouldn’t come back (impossible,) so I followed the bend of the woodline and kept on until the River spread like a glistening, final obstacle between myself and the common lands.
There was nothing to keep me from heaving a sigh of exhaustion before I trudged onward, cutting a path out into the open before splashing into the noisy current.
Halfway across I saw movement - it was Autumn after all, I reminded myself - and yet the sharp expression of surprise at seeing another horse out here so early, barely past dawn, gave me reason to be suspicious. “Morning.” I called out as I swam, my voice too high to be masculine and sadly too low to be feminine. After a minute I’d drifted to the bank and there I stood, motionless, still submerged up to my narrow, pale chest.
I could see her better from there. My gaze wasn’t the shy kind, never had been, and it doesn’t miss how her skin has texture as well as unique color. I wouldn’t say that I marveled at her in the moment, but I would say that I probably lingered a bit too long over her face and that horn. Her eyes seemed cut from green glass, and I liked that. I shook a bit of water from my ears and sent the tangled strands of my mane flying in every direction, then tried “Is this the way to the Field?” As a sloppy approach to breaking the ice.