The filly with that odd crystalline gaze molded of diamonds and sapphires has always dreamed that the world was this great wonder. Hidden jewels waiting to be sought, blank pages of maps wanting to be found. There was an endless invitation where ever she dared to look. Astana views the world through rose tinted glasses, refusing to take them off even as she continues to grow older. Everything is beautiful, and her heart clings to this notion fiercely, as if afraid of where she will fall if she should ever let go. Her knuckles are white with effort. Lets see how long she can hold on for.
Astana does not know that she has found a kindred spirit in this great world, that on this night, they have found each other. A rare occurrence to find another wayward wanderer in a land where everyone would rather just stay put where they are. Call it fate, destiny, sheer luck, or maybe one o them wished on the first start they saw tonight. Regardless, they have found each other and Astana will desperately open her heart and offer it to him, just like she has done with others before him. She has never learned to be cautious, the desert had never prepared her for much of anything.
He grins back at her and that is all Astana needs to feel entirely at home in the warmth of his presence, as if she has lived there her entire life. His voice is as kind as his smile and Astana wants to nestle herself into his side and bask the serenity he has provided her with on this night ignited by moonlight and silhouetted by the bright shadows of stars. “I know what you mean,” she says in a voice with a dreamy, airy quality to it, as if she were lilting on the edges of awake and asleep, unsure of which to fall into. “I miss the stars far too much to slumber too soundly,” she says, and the words are not her own, but her mother’s repeated back from the daughter she barely knows. The daughter she had fretted over more often than the twin that lays nestled at her side.
A giggle, girlish and youthful, she returns from being the daughter of Keav, to just Astana with the diamond eyes and reckless smile. “Really?” She says, her heart fluttering with his compliment as she lets those strands of white gold touch against her body briefly. She hears the thump of his own tail and a memory strikes her. “There was a coyote where we lived, sometimes he would come around, I always thought he was cute, but we could never get close enough,” she says, that face forming into a pout for a moment. Oh, the great childhood regrets. In truth, it could have been a danger to her family, but, they had lived in peace with many of the desert creatures, all existing in harmony.
His question strikes her, skipping around her thoughts like a child trying to find just the right flower to pick for their mother. “I think I would like to be a great explorer,” she says then, her answer, hardly makes any sense, she is a silly girl after all. “Able to climb any mountain, swim to the depths of any sea, and travel endlessly without having to sleep, or rest, or stop at all,” she says, excitement thrumming in her chest like an electric current. “I would see nearly all of it, but not everything, I have found the mysteries of life to be a beautiful thing,” she ends almost longingly. She moves close to him now, peering at the boy curiously. “And you? What would you do? What would you be? What does your heart want?” Hearts, after all, are fickle, fickle things at the best of times.
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