She would wake before dawn and make her way quietly down the stairs to the kitchen, where she would pour herself a bowl of cereal, mixing fruit pebbles and cocoa puffs, a speciality of hers that others have seemed oddly reluctant to try. After eating every last bit and drinking the fruity chocolatey milk, she would put her bowl in the sink she’d bound upstairs and get dressed pairing a pleated light blue skirt with yellow sequins in the shape of the sun on the side, near the hip with a pastel yellow shirt to match the sequins and mismatched socks because she claims the washing machine ate the others. Feet enclose themselves in a pair of light purple sneakers, scuffed with adventure and stained from stories. Her hair would be messy, there was little time for brushing, before she would rush out the door and into the world, content to enjoy it in solitude having inherited her mother’s fondness of alone time. She never feared, never questioned. She danced and laughed showing all her teeth and would hang upside down like a bat. A wild child who danced to the beat of her own drum.
But it would seem, this wild drum, has found a conductor.
Hurtfur.
A soft, reckless smile etches itself on her gold face. Diamond eyes look out across her new home. Nerine. She wonders, what her mother would think of this new home, as opposed to the desert she had been born in. It reminds her of the stories her mother had told her once upon a time, about where she had been born so many years ago. A place where she could dig her hooves in the sand and let the tide come in to lap over her feet. Astana likes to think, as poetic as she is, that things have come full circle as she stands here in Nerine, her hair stained by salt and sea. There is this layer of ocean air that remains clinging to her skin and Astana hopes it will never go away.
She has made her way down to the sandy shore, carefully picking those feet along the rocky cliffside. Heartfire as dominating of a presence as she was, strong and imposing, she afforded Astana a considerable amount of freedom, encouraging her to test her limits and grow stronger. So she acknowledges the challenge of the rocky cliffside, but she thinks of Heartfire and attempts to imitate the mare that had taken her in. Maybe, possibly, she could be just like her one day!
Astana’s dreams have always been a bit far fetched.
It’s part of her charm, really.
The white golden filly was able to make her down the cliffside, hooves stepping off the rocky terrain and into the soft sand that the beach provides. She has been exploring more and more as of late, so to settle within her home for a moment feels oddly comforting. Regardless of how she ended up in Nerine, Astana is happy to be here now, utterly content with what it has to offer and to have settled along side Heartfire and look to her as her role model. Shoulders work in unison with those legs that are still too long for her slight body as she reaches the edge of the water, muzzle lowers, letting the salt ignite her senses. It is then diamond eyes peer forward and suddenly, the horizon seems a little more unattainable than usual.
a s t a n a