gold cage; hostage to my feelings

[Celina]

The girl withers at Celina’s request, and her body twitches just slightly in agitation. Celina is unconcerned, and waits expectantly until the lights around them begin to blink out. First the reds go, then the oranges and yellows. They fade in an order that reminds her of a rainbow, or would if she could still remember the order of the colors. Celina had known them once, known them and a great many other facts and trivialities. She probably still knows them, if she is being truthful with herself, but they are tucked away in the back of her mind with all the other useless things: empathy, altruism, the history of the first Nerinian Empire. The visible disappointment at being asked to get rid of the light does not sway Celina. Rather, it is the wrongness of the girl’s assumption. Thinking like that is dangerous; it will make the little girl easy prey. It doesn’t occur to Celina that perhaps the monsters that live in the wasteland do not hunt their own. “I don’t want other things to find me.” She answers, satisfied by the handful of white lights that now illumine them both. It would be easy enough to outrun the younger filly danger came near, Celina reasons, or even to take off into the night. For now though, it’s safe enough to talk. Her ears do still flick, and her sea-green eyes dart away, but most of her attention is on the girl who tells her that her father is not here. No one like that lives here, Beyza says. Celina, aware of her father’s incredible repertoire, is not discouraged in the slightest. “He’s wearing a different shape then,” Wolfbane’s daughter knows, “but he knows I’m looking for him.” He’ll find her, the confidence in her voice says; she doesn’t need to inspect each stranger she might find in Pangea in order to find him. With that portion of her quest achieved, Celina can turn her attention to more immediate concerns, such as exactly how the little white filly was making the lights. “Can you do more than that?” She asks. “Some of my family can make me see things that aren’t there. Are yours real or just pretend?” Her curiousity is almost clinical, one question after the other as she waits for an answer. celina i'm that bad type, make-your-mama-sad type make-your-girlfriend-mad type, might-seduce-your-dad type

@[Beyza]