The light that meets the dark
Cheri felt like an idiot the second she stepped through the faeries' veil, when only two seconds before she’d put on a brave smile and offered herself up to the culling like some fantasy hero. Come to find out, she was not the hero-type. She was the type who clenched her cheeks together when she came across to the other side and was immediately engulfed in darkness, then immediately engulfed. The kind of character who plummeted screaming to their death while their insignificantly short lives flashed before their eyes.
Kind of pathetic, actually. Her last thoughts had been: this is it this is how I die I’m going to die no no n—. Which, looking back on them after blinking awake a few moments later on the beach, was not a very comforting sort of realization to have when you only have seconds left to live. Neither was waking up and being confused about how that was possible, looking around to see that the darkness still persisted, and then slowly coming to the realization that you weren’t actually alive… in a sense.
Cheri was a ghost. One of many who’d failed the quest and were slowly coming to their senses on the Beach around her. With a little effort she picked herself up out of the sand, in shock at the rapid descent of the happy vessel they’d all boarded less than hours ago, and tried to puzzle out what had happened. Her thoughts, however, felt too fuzzy around the edges. If she could feel anything at all she suspected that her head should be pounding, or at least scattered in a million tiny pieces all over the shoreline, but surprisingly Cheri hadn’t even gotten scratched.
“Hm.” She murmured, the word echoing as if it were far away.
Well… what now? Having lived such a very short, very centered life meant there was really only one place her spirit could go to find repose, so the weightless filly ducked her flimsy head and floated off before Memorie, Lilli, or any other horse might try to stop her.
For the first time since the Eclipse, fear didn’t follow Cheri. Only the wispy, suspended ribbons of her tail fanned out behind the lonely pegasus, and she stopped to wistfully peer out across the glen of the Meadow when she passed by. The world was silent, but for once she could enjoy it all to herself. She hovered on; past the babbling River where the shadow creatures clicked and scurried around on the shore. Cheri saw them everywhere now that she wasn’t a possible quarry, and it amazed her just how naïve she’d been in her little bubble.
Their world was overrun by them and so was Taiga, try as the northerners had to keep the monsters at bay. As Cheri floated through a solid tree trunk she could sense them lumbering in the dark: great beastly things with humped backs and wide mouths that made unpleasant sounds. Another year of non-intervention and she doubted her family would make it, talented or not. There was a limitation to their powers, and these creature’s hunger to devour all of life itself seemed infinite.
She turned her head away in sadness, half-believing that perhaps that was their fate: to persist and live as ghosts in a dying, soon-to-be-dead world. With a shudder at the thought, Cheri haunted the edges of the dying forest and wondered instead what that meant for her mother, Amarine, who had chosen differently. “Be safe.” The spectral horse wished, closing her eyes, and like some apparition from a dream she drifted through the night-black woods in search of any living soul who might give her peace.
Kind of pathetic, actually. Her last thoughts had been: this is it this is how I die I’m going to die no no n—. Which, looking back on them after blinking awake a few moments later on the beach, was not a very comforting sort of realization to have when you only have seconds left to live. Neither was waking up and being confused about how that was possible, looking around to see that the darkness still persisted, and then slowly coming to the realization that you weren’t actually alive… in a sense.
Cheri was a ghost. One of many who’d failed the quest and were slowly coming to their senses on the Beach around her. With a little effort she picked herself up out of the sand, in shock at the rapid descent of the happy vessel they’d all boarded less than hours ago, and tried to puzzle out what had happened. Her thoughts, however, felt too fuzzy around the edges. If she could feel anything at all she suspected that her head should be pounding, or at least scattered in a million tiny pieces all over the shoreline, but surprisingly Cheri hadn’t even gotten scratched.
“Hm.” She murmured, the word echoing as if it were far away.
Well… what now? Having lived such a very short, very centered life meant there was really only one place her spirit could go to find repose, so the weightless filly ducked her flimsy head and floated off before Memorie, Lilli, or any other horse might try to stop her.
For the first time since the Eclipse, fear didn’t follow Cheri. Only the wispy, suspended ribbons of her tail fanned out behind the lonely pegasus, and she stopped to wistfully peer out across the glen of the Meadow when she passed by. The world was silent, but for once she could enjoy it all to herself. She hovered on; past the babbling River where the shadow creatures clicked and scurried around on the shore. Cheri saw them everywhere now that she wasn’t a possible quarry, and it amazed her just how naïve she’d been in her little bubble.
Their world was overrun by them and so was Taiga, try as the northerners had to keep the monsters at bay. As Cheri floated through a solid tree trunk she could sense them lumbering in the dark: great beastly things with humped backs and wide mouths that made unpleasant sounds. Another year of non-intervention and she doubted her family would make it, talented or not. There was a limitation to their powers, and these creature’s hunger to devour all of life itself seemed infinite.
She turned her head away in sadness, half-believing that perhaps that was their fate: to persist and live as ghosts in a dying, soon-to-be-dead world. With a shudder at the thought, Cheri haunted the edges of the dying forest and wondered instead what that meant for her mother, Amarine, who had chosen differently. “Be safe.” The spectral horse wished, closing her eyes, and like some apparition from a dream she drifted through the night-black woods in search of any living soul who might give her peace.
Moody thread, anyone?