Meadow

Evening. The light of the setting sun splayed across the clouds overhead, pinking their edges. Tauriel’s sharp brown eyes scanned the horizon, and she noted the coming night in the back of her mind, but she kept moving. The meadows were nearby, and she didn’t want to stop walking until she knew for sure that she was there, that she was safe in the embrace of the lands and far from the rough waters of the sea.

On a whim, she had left months ago from her former herd. It was a mistake to leave the lands she grew up in, but the curiosity for the world beyond those borders grew within her until she could no longer ignore it. It hadn’t been hard at first. Just a few steps out of safety. Just a few miles every day. She followed the same overgrown trail that she had taken into the beyond, in the reverse direction east. And every sunrise she saw traced distance until the morning she came upon the ocean.

Thinking back now, she didn't know quite what possessed her to think she could do it. What she thought might lay beyond the line where the ocean meets the sky... whatever the pull was, it had been a much more monumental challenge than she was prepared for. When finally she dragged herself from the surf, she was spent. Days she swam, and nights too, battling rough surf and torrential storms and not once prepared to give her life so easily back to the gods. When finally her eyes saw the island chain in the distant, she had been relieved. Salvation. It wasn't until after she found herself, standing like a drowned rat on the shore with her gaze traveling once more until the horizon where the ocean met the sky that she realized there was no going back.

Whether she liked it or not, she had moved on to greener pastures so to speak, though stepping now onto the dried leaves and tangled brush of autumn did not do much to encourage this belief. None the less she was here now, and there was no going back.