when i run through the deep dark forest long after this has begun,
Deep within the shadowed forest that just outlines the blackened shore, where the sparse outcropping of trees become the dark and thick foliage of the jungle, a young girl stirs.
Cloaked in intense evergreen vines, draped in deep pigments of jungle flowers that are tinged with smoke and ash, dirt clinging to her gold-blue shoulders and haunches, she carefully inches her way through the humid wilderness. Great, large leaves - broad and fat - are pushed away from her chest, droplets of water from a recent rain staining her iridescent skin a deeper shade of blue, pulling at the darker hues in her coat. The air is thick with moisture, heavy on her pallid skin and in the ivory tendrils of her mane and forelock that are tangled with broken twigs and debris from her familiar shelter of the dark trees and brush.
Raised in silence, the yearling is keen to hide amongst the vines and branches of the jungle, nestled and hidden away from the lively bustle of the ocean’s tide or the inland grasses, or the volcano’s looming stature. She only knows of her mother; an untamed and protective lioness, who still grooms her daughter each morning and night, and who had recently taught her how to hunt.
Even though her equine shape is bright against the deep evergreen and brown, the wild-eyed girl moves stealthily between wide roots and damp undergrowth. Daye’s wolf-skin does not find her today in the midst of the afternoon sun, and though her instincts (and learned traits from her mother) keep her mostly confined to the shadows, today her growing independence brings her towards the outskirts. Her nutmeg eyes - wild and fierce - peer from beneath the shade and into the blackened shoreline in the distance, brimmed blue with the ocean’s waves.
She wonders where mother is, and if she will soon return with dinner. The palomino’s stomach churns hungrily, though it is not grass or vegetation she craves. She licks her blue-iridescent lips as she watches the dark and crinkling waves that sparkle in the sunlight, content with basking in her shadows and wilderness until mother’s paws were heard upon the damp undergrowth.
Dayé
where the sun would set, trees are dead, and the rivers were none.