Common

I DON'T WORRY, WORRYING DON'T AGREE
THINGS THAT BOTHER YOU, NEVER BOTHER ME!

Talya wasn’t supposed to go to the faraway places. Mamapapa had strictly told her time and time again the Forest was supposed to be all she knew. Even the wide open territory beside it with tall grass and so many potential new friends was off limits to Talya. Ever since the stranger came, Mamapapa had been very suspicious and reminded Talya constantly how bad the faraway places were. He warned her the stranger could be there and without the Forest Goddess, she could be in danger.

Talya didn’t completely understand the concept of danger – at least not in the way her sire understood it. To Talya, bad things just… never happened. She could blink and shed them from her skin with just a few seconds of thought, never letting them stick. Maybe somewhere deep, deep inside the fragile, cracked shape of her mind they were rooting there, poisoning her from the inside out, but she’d never stop to dwell over that.

The faraway places sounded like so much fun. Everyone else was allowed to go to the faraway places, so it really wasn’t fair that Talya wasn’t. If she asked the Forest Goddess she knew she would tell Talya she could go to the faraway places… and didn’t the Forest Goddess have more power than Mamapapa?

…Talya wasn’t actually sure about that. Mamapapa was everything as far as Talya knew.

But if it helped her win the argument that she could go to the faraway places, Talya decided to push away sound reason and the nagging feeling in her gut and just go for it. The little cream mare charged into the ocean with a victorious holler, splashing over-excessively as she went deeper.

By the time she reached Crossing Isle she was short of breath but alive. Her eyes were wide and bright as she looked everywhere she could. Though she was in the body of a maturing young mare, Talya was every bit of a foal in personality. The way she bounced around with reckless abandon and poked her nose in everything she came across were very childlike qualities that she’d likely never be rid of. She cared little about the boundaries of certain places and how, in a season like this, she really should avoid the Commons or the Meadows.

Talya bounced along, squealing and giggling as she kicked up her hooves and startled little birds hunting for their breakfast. A flurry of ten or so fluttered off with panicked chirps as she jumped toward them, her hooves landing in a hard thud where they’d been scratching and poking about. She laughed wildly, throwing her head up… and then froze.

Every particle of her being became rigid, and her eyes went wide. Something deep, deep inside her clicked open – a metaphorical door she’d had to lock very, very tight. Though Talya chose not to remember it, when she was very little she’d once had many, many nightmares. These nightmares where of a piece of herself being ripped away from her core – the other half of her heart bloodily shorn apart. She’d always woken screaming, crying, calling out for who she missed – the only creature she’d ever truly missed.

Her brother. It had hurt to remember him, so Talya had forgotten him. And sometimes it hurt that she had to forget him.

But here he was… grazing… flesh and blood and real and right in front of her. Talya cried – it was mostly a happy noise but some of it was choked by the tears that were streaming down her face and the emotion climbing thickly in her throat. Talya barreled toward him – her brother, her soul, her heart – without realizing there could be consequences toward running full-speed at a horse she hadn’t seen in near a year and a half. Talya hadn’t thought she could be unrecognizable. Talya hadn’t thought the time apart could have changed him.

All she saw was her brother. All she knew was the emotion nearly crippling her inside. All she wanted was to be close to him again.

She did not pull to a halt and stop a decent distance. Talya only slowed so that she wouldn’t barrel into him fullspeed, but still bounced on unsure steps as she came and pressed against his side, pressing her face into his mane and inhaling deep the smell her heart and soul had longed for for so long.

“I’ve missed you,” Talya whispered, and tears made slick, wet paths down her cheeks.