Halyven
Eira...
Eira woke with with a start. Her thick coat was wet through and the canvas of muddy-grey skin beneath it was shivering wildly. The rain had been falling constantly since that brief moment of respite at The Pinnacle (for the party), and the very best shelter she had been able to find in the snowy, northern wilderness as she prepared through twilight, was a scant copse of leafless, dying pines. Grateful for even the smallest of mercies bestowed upon her, however, the scrawny filly had nestled her weak frame as tightly as she could to preserve warmth through the cold night, down snug within the cradle of one tree’s bulging, brown butters roots. Though in recent weeks the shy little Eriucla child (which she’d befriended at last), had spent many hours visiting outside the warm security of Eira’s cupped ear, their time spent traipsing astray through wind and deep snow drifts had seen the delicate fairy-creature once more cowering away. “Little Fay?” the startled yearling’s thoughts probed warily. “Little Fay? I had the most worrying dream.” There was no answer. There never was…. Lean, crooked forelimbs stretched out stiffly from beneath her, one and then the other, and sliding the ear that housed her friend backwards for added safety, Eira shook her chilled forequarters in a futile effort to loosen the flimsy sinew within. She turned soon after to inspect the skin upon her torso which had very slowly been healing; the rash had all but vanished and she could only assume that all of the tasks the ominous voice in her mind had given her, had been already completed. Unfortunately the lightning that stalked her, still did just that. Intermittent forks of electricity sliced through the air nearby her numb hind leg, as though from nowhere, and every time it happened, the thick, shaggy hair having from her emaciated frame stood up, wickedly on end. The feeling was so unexpected and strange that even after months suffering, it still left a bubbling unease through her core. At last Eira’s thoughtful eyes lifted towards sky. The thick rim of sooty lashes guarding them lowered a little as the icy droplets of rain fell in rapid succession against her face. There was a lightness to the clouds and a pleasanter brightness in the blowy air all around her, that suggested daylight’s advancement. “Another night survived…” she thought heavily, drawing a long breath whose freezing caress inside caused her lungs to cough. Valkyrie, the white horse with the wings upon her skull, had vanished a good many days before, and the weight of loneliness had well and truly settled back across her shoulders. It was times like this that she missed her family terribly, her mother all the more. Pulling herself forward stiffly to stand, she found herself lost in thought, bathed in the memory of the beloved moments they’d spend together on the warm sands of their beach; Eira wondered then with a quickening heart, if the Rift (like Roscorro had explained weeks prior), might grant her a gift which might allow a small part of Cirrus to be with her always. The frail filly drew a breath and held it. “Hello?” With an element or expectation and more still of worry, her dark blue gaze traced the curves and colours of the watery snow around her until a complete circle had been turned. There was no sign of acknowledgement whatsoever. “Cou… could I have a coat like my ma’s? …please?” Eira waited with baited breath for something to happen, and finally, when wooziness began to cloud her hope and she felt as though she might at any second fall down, a sudden crowd of voices gathered around her. The noise of their chanting, the pitch and the volume, was almost too much and though she thrashed first left and then right to find them - casting also three glances behind - there was no trace of another being like her, nearby. There was borne upon their escalating and frightening sound, however, a message: To complete this trial, you must, Do something nice for someone you dislike... Help someone with their trial... Provide a corpse for the Revitaflies to infest… The young hybrid’s mind was spinning and the pressure building behind her clenched eyes became unbearable. “Ok! Ok, I will!” her thoughts stammered frantically in an effort to be rid of the awful, deafening noise. At once the voices ceased and an eerie silence rose around her. Eira was trembling, terrified, and hurried away towards the outline of the spires on the horizon. "I am a book of snow, a spacious hand, an open meadow, a circle that waits, I belong to the earth and its winter." |
Notes:
Just Eira acquiring her new trial :)
