The seasons had turned since the incident, and everything had changed. After her scuffle with the big brute that had twisted her fate, Daedra had been cleansed of the parasite that had clung in such audacity to her sharp, unwelcoming curves. She was free and unburdened once again, with only her own voices inside of her. It had been an unpleasant matter – bloody and revolting – and the recovery had been no kinder. She had teetered on the brink of death, delirious and hallucinating. Those had been the best days, when the pain and the blood loss bathed her in a numb, pleasant warmth – when she remembered the most ecstatic and the most excruciating moments in her life in vivid exaggeration. But after those came the rest – long, tortuous sequences of hours upon hours of pain that only flowed and never ebbed. And yet she went on living – that small yet indestructible skeleton of hers remaining infallibly upright. She had outlived her mother and her own spawn, and she would surely outlive many others. So here she was, alone and uninvited on the narrow slopes that led up towards the Peak. When Daedra had finally gathered enough strength to return to the Forest, she had found Vercingetorix gone and the rest of the area deserted. She didn’t know where the herd had gone or why, but she knew that they had gone without her. She was not upset. Vercingetorix was never meant to be anything more than a stop gap, but it had been an unfortunate turn of events to find herself homeless while still so weak. And so she had had to wander the Crossing during her recovery, limping and wounded. Now that she was better, however, her mind was beginning to reach out with curiosity again, and that was why she had ventured into the Vulcan mares’ territory. She knew nothing of them, except for the generic gossip and word-of-mouth that was common to all horses that had lived on the Lost Islands for any length of time. And so she had begun to wander, intrigued, up the mountain. Daedra had paused on a wider ledge to catch her breath. Her health was not quite the same as it had been before. Her body, which had already been slim and lithe, now veered closer to an unhealthy thinness; her once attractive curves that swayed smoothly and enticingly were now angular and sometimes stiff. Yet there still remained a hint of her dangerous beauty in her dark pelt, littered with scars, and her mane and tail of liquid silver. She heard the approach of another horse and, wondering if it was someone about to notice their intruder, stepped around the corner to look. Her hooves clipped against the rocky ground, announcing her arrival before she saw the other mare, a dark chocolate coloured thing. Not knowing who she was, Daedra simply stopped and stared, ever the social butterfly. A snort escaped her velvety nostrils as she watched the other mare with hard, dark eyes. |