Common

I dreamed, not of white knights and romantic entreaties, but of flying through the air with birds at her side; of swimming with dolphins and leaping up to taste the ocean spray on my face; and of climbing trees, with the surefootedness of the monkeys I'd watched as a young girl. I dreamed of home, and of the family that I'd long ago lost along the way. Of my father, and of the way that used to console me when the nights without my mother became too lonely to bear. Of my darling twin, whose golden figure was always the sun to my moon. But mostly (perhaps because even in sleep I could not entirely ignore my surroundings), I dreamed of my mother and of those early summer days Naenia and I spent learning how to swim, unaware that it was all preparation for our escape.

Those halcyon years felt so long ago now, especially in the yawning void of emptiness that I now found myself . As a girl, solitude had been my armor and loneliness my shield. Even with Naenia near, I'd always pretended that I was fine, no matter what the danger was. I had dealt with the loss of her mother by simply bullying myself into believing that Iwas okay alone among the bugs and the birds. And it had worked, mostly.

Or at least, it had worked until I'd left the familiar birds and bees behind.

Once I was away from the isles, it was much harder to pretend that I liked to be alone. That the silence of solitude didn't drown out the sound of everything else around me. So hard, in fact, that I, the pale daughter of Ailill and Siobhan simply gave up the pretense and tried to come home.

Except, as I would learn, there was no easy way home for the girl who'd never wanted to travel in the first place.

I washed ashore in the dead of a foggy autumn's night so dark that I could see little save for the plume of my own breath in the still air. The bone-chilling water had wrapped leaden weights around my ankles and stolen every ounce of energy I'd had when I set out. It made it hard to drag myself beyond the lapping waves and left no energy with which to dry off. By the time I'd managed to reach the relative safety of a few bright-leaved trees gone monochromatic in the night, it was all I could do to curl myself into a rough approximation of a ball and hope that hypothermia would be kind.

I awoke to stars falling from the sky; giant, fluffy constellations wafting down gently to cling to a world already transformed by frost. To me, as a girl who had rarely seen so much as a snowflake, it was an enchanting sight and I stared, transfixed for what felt like hours.

Eventually the cold won out and I grew tired of shivering on the damp ground. I rose and began to walk through the winter wonderland, unaware that it would soon fade as the sun rose and returned more proper autumn temperatures. For a long time I neither saw nor heard anyone through the muffling blanket of falling snow, but eventually I was able to discern a vaguely horse-shaped figure through the overcast gloom. "Pardon me-" I began, an apologetic smile curling along peach-pale lips."Maybe it's a silly question, but do you know the way to the Ridge? I seem to have washed ashore somewhere quite different."

OOC: Open to anyone and anything <3