“what do you fear, lady?' he asked. 'a cage,' she said.”; any

[Ygritte]

BETTER BEWARE, I GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT
DEVIL-MAY-CARE WITH A LUST FOR LIFE

Autumn has conjured the small mare from the depths of her own thoughts. The world blazed in a frivolous blur of gold and red as the trees grew tired and were soon shedding their heavy leaves, thick with damp chill, to curl inward as winter was creeping upon Beqanna. The already downed foliage was dry and crinkled beneath the neatly trimmed hooves of the bay and salmon mare. The liquid honey of her left eye (her only remaining one) looked over the meadow with the quip of a small smile on her eternally beautiful face. The cold air is drawn inward as she expands her chest to taste the freshness of the early morning. It was a tickling delight to know she had arrived home. 

After a moment, Ygritte exhales slowly, admiring the nearly missed cloud of vapor that promised an early winter. She shivers but not from the cold. Beqanna was an ever evolving beast of a fickle nature and it held it's residents as close as sacred texts. Ygritte was an everlasting face that had dwelled on the edges of this land since she had last reigned queen of Sylva...but that was many, many years ago.

Beqanna's magic gave her eternal beauty, the ability to change to any avian of natural and unnatural origin but she longed for the connection to another creature...something to ground her and make her stay. Kreios had been her rock but since she had lost him to the form of a wild cat and the allure of the mountains, there was not much hope that the mare could ever connect with another in such away. Instead, she passed her days along, a blush colored swan in some pond, alone.

But there was hope.

Her return to Beqanna meant she had healed parts of her that she hadn't known she needed to mend. Here there are new faces and new scents. Here she was but simply Ygritte, the mare with flowers that grew from where her right eye had once been. Still now and always, she carefully tended them, plucking a few to form a crown of petals upon her brow so she would not forget where she had come from.

Ygritte.