Falls

It feels wrong, somehow, that she would leave anyone so distraught as Ironclad seemed. It felt as though her duty was not fulfilled there - the loud groaning of the land could not be ignored, however. She asked for her freedom in the midst of breeding season and had been granted it. It was a test she would not soon forget he’d passed in her eyes. His initial transgression was paid off in that single act of gifting back her freedom.

So she obeys his stipulation of not being caught out in the Commons, whinnying instead for her friend as she goes this way and that along its border in an attempt to see if she might catch wind of a returned answer. She looks for her one-time not-sister Charlotte and when it is clear Charlotte is no longer there, Chalice moves on.

The feeling of autumn here is less stifling of spirit than on Tinuvel. The sun still held warmth for her, the scent of pine did not bite her nostrils so unwaveringly. The Crossing was not her earth either, not the right home, but it was so well traveled and hungered so mightily for stories to write themselves on it’s pages that she felt at least soothed by its sated nature.

Her body shines in the noon sun as she makes her gaited entrance and steps high through the Meadow until she reaches the falls. Here, she had once been told, was the perfect place to bathe herself free of salt before it began to itch and scratch.

The ocean had been her nemesis from the start, but lord if she were not a nymphatic beauty there beneath the shine of a waterfall wall, basking in the spray from behind it. Only her brilliance of color betrayed her position as she stood still there, avoiding the direct and pounding cold of the water.

She hums, quiet and faint, her blue eyes half-lidded as she felt down into the earth. The meditation would help her know her path-- it had to.