Help!

GOOD DAY, SUNSHINE. Clementine’s breaths came quickly and raggedly as she took her first unsteady steps in the Rift. The sunshine girl looked around frantically, searching for anything that was remotely familiar.  Even the shapes that the trees made here were foreign.  Everything screamed different.  Under different circumstances, she may have been excited to explore a place like this.  But not like this.  Not all alone.  Not when she wasn’t sure if she’d lost everything and everyone she loved.  From between her ears, Prudence gave a small chirp of reassurance before burrowing further into the soft strands of hair, trying to keep warm and stem the endless shivers. And then the shadows came.  Possessed as if they were actually alive and not shadows at all.  The amulet she’d worn so proudly around her neck grows hot. She doesn’t even have time to cry out before the shadows greedily steal it away.  But that’s not the worst of it.  Then the hissing and the snarling begins.  The flower girl takes an unsteady step backwards, and if signaled by some unseen force, vines appear from nowhere.  They plunge into the girl’s nose, her ears, her throat.  She cannot scream but the panic is overwhelming.  She is hyperventilating but cannot get air into her lungs.  Just as her eyes are about to roll back in her head...the vines disappear.  The girl collapses in a heap, too exhausted to let out the scream that the vines had stifled. She took a few moments to catch her breath, to attempt to recover from whatever that had been before a familiar voice pulled her back to reality. She pulled herself to her feet once more as the distinctive voice of her sister pierced the strange surroundings.  She knew it was Melita.  She just knew it.  She closed the distance from her sister and said nothing for the first few moments, just held her sister as close as she could.  She pressed face against Melita’s shoulder, memorizing her scent all over again. ”Melly, you’re okay,” she finally managed to murmur, out loud.  ”I was hoping Mama was with you.  I saw her and A’mal but not since before…” her voice drifted off as the memories came flooding back, causing the girl to shiver against her sister’s side.  ”She was using her shield,” she offered, in way of explanation,  ”I thought she was right behind me!” the flower girl said, quietly. She only pulled away from her sister’s embrace when she heard the sounds of another.  She pulled her head away from her sister’s side and looked in the direction of the sound.  It was an unfamiliar, accented greeting, but didn’t sound unfriendly. ”Hello? Are you from Helovia too?” the sunshine girl asked, wondering if this pegasus knew anything of the whereabouts of their mother. C L E M E N T I N E

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