10-04-2020, 04:39 PM
Tornados from a butterfly's wing
After the battle, Ama did not recover. Days turned into weeks until it seemed that the ink-black pony was destined to slowly atrophy into nothingness. She would graze until it got too tiring to chew, and then she would sleep deeply, a cycle that did nothing but make the days go by.
It had been a colder than usual spring evening when she'd felt the weariness set in. Sleep had been a large part of her life recently, but tonight it felt like a black wave was crashing down on her. Heavy, inexorable weight on her feet and her eyelids demanded she find some place to sleep, and quickly. Deep grasses, a hidden vale in the moor, a place not to be disturbed any time soon.
A nest of sorts was constructed haphazardly. The long, coarse grasses coerced into a canopy of sorts, the heather trampled into a deep bed. And then, with little thought, she collapsed into a dreamless sleep.
While the gemstone girl slept, her body went to work. The tissue of her muscles softened and rearranged, molded into something new. Tendons built to fly as well as walk, joints swollen with new fluid and young chitin. Building blocks for big things.
It was a blessing that she was able to sleep through it. That she didn't have to experience the pain of growth, or the horror. She simply surfaced one day in early summer, aching and groggy, dust in her coat and nothing but the vague sense that time had passed until she tried to stand. Then she knew.
There was a weight on her back, wrinkled black masses that she couldn't dislodge. Instead her heart picked up speed, sending shocks of adrenaline through her and blood through the newborn wings. They unfolded slowly in the hot sunlight. Gradual flattening until they looked less like tattered scraps of fabric and more like flight appendages. Massive replicas of the fluttering things butterflies wore, strange and uncomfortable on a pony's shoulders.
Ama looked until her neck cramped, not believing the evidence of her eyes. Nope. She must be asleep again, dreaming impossible things and waiting to wake up. Had to be. She stepped towards the treeline, and stopped again quickly when the bizarre sensation of the wings moving with her followed. She very sore, more than she'd realized on first becoming aware. It was like her shoulders had been flayed open and left to the elements for weeks. Perhaps that wasn't so far off the mark.
She was dazed. Hungry, too. At a loss for any other reaction, she dropped her head to crop at grasses far greener than when she'd fallen asleep.
...Amarine