let the jungle swallow you whole
“You’re going to get yourself killed if you keep going like that.”

Faolain’s eyes, aching as they adjust to the half-light of the dappled shade beneath which she stood, unsteadily, lift up to watch as a piece of the jungle detaches itself within the trees. The creature is a shadow, haloed in pale mane and tail, a shard of the Ridge itself — or so Faolain believes. It speaks with two voices, one into her unaltered ear, and one into the silent ear. It takes her a moment to decipher that only one voice is real, and which one that is.

hungry hungry hungry
“The jungle isn’t as familiar as it once was, once-Queen Faolain.”

Again, it takes her a moment to puzzle out the two voices. She blinks at the… (child?) colt in the trees, his image splitting apart. She watches two colts in the trees, and then they merge back together again, and she becomes certain that she is looking at a boy. A dark, pale-haired boy, vaguely familiar.

“I… was never a queen, not truly,” she says, her voice little more than a quiet rasp, the sound of wind through the leaves. “You know me?” It is half a question, half a statement. There is familiarity in the way the child addresses her (a child, though already taller than the black wraith).

this thing, all things, devours, devours
“Should I call for someone to help you?”

Faolain becomes aware of some invisible barrier that seems to prevent the boy from approaching. Is he afraid? Does the jungle have some kind of hold on him, as it does on her?

“No,” she answers hesitantly, though the jungle isn’t as familiar as it once was echoes in her mind. “So long as the rivers have not changed course, I will be alright.” Her head begins to clear as she takes another tentative step into the shadows of the Ridge. Something continues to whisper into her dead ear, but it’s quiet, and gibberish, and fades in and out like waves. She wonders if the Ridge itself speaks to her. The colt is a conduit, perhaps. It makes sense to her, somehow.

She turns her gaze back to the boy and studies him for a minute, leaning her barrel against the trunk of a tree. Aside from the voices, she feels slowly more like herself again, as though she is returning from a far-away place and dusting off the cobwebs of her vacant head before settling in once again. Memories of her time before her fall are gone, though she remembers the Ridge, and the faces she knew here. She remembers Rivaini, and Charybdis, and Çiçek, and many others — but she does not remember leaving, or returning, or being thrown into the sea. She does not remember Salem, though she knows she was there.

She does not remember this child.

“Who are you?” she asks, pushing away from the tree and testing her weight on all four hooves. She still does not understand why she feels so swollen, so heavy; but she brushes these discomforts away to worry about later. They are probably nothing.