The Lost Islands
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Meadow

Force-claiming is not allowed here. This is a peaceful, neutral area meant for socialising.

give up forever to touch you



It was unlike Iris to let her guard down, but the memories she was experiencing were so real, so tangible that they occupied every one of her senses. Though her walnut-colored body still stood beneath a bleak sky in a wintry meadow, the mare’s mind had transported her to the Prairie. She could feel a warm breeze tugging the tendrils of her mane across her face, and the tickle of the tall grasses on her white-dipped limbs. She could hear the soft murmur of her parents speaking to each other in the background, and the giggles of her younger sibling as she stalked an insect through the grass. But Iris couldn’t see the slight figure of the brown filly, which had disappeared behind one of the few scraggly-looking trees that dotted the Prairie. The young mare lifted her hoof to take a step, yearning to join her sister, and then-

Whoosh. The air was expelled from her in a sudden gust as something - no, someone - collided with her motionless figure. To say that Iris was immediately on the defensive would be an understatement; quicker than one would expect a leggy creature like herself to move, the mare swung her white rump around to face her attacker. The warm chocolate of her eyes - Lily’s eyes, the one aspect of her mother’s appearance that she had inherited - was no longer soft with wistful memory, but hard and blazing. ”Hey! You can’t just-” she began, before finding that she was speaking to air.

The cream-and-gold stallion had hastened backwards, his body language repentant - submissive, even - and that further cooled the brief flash or Iris’s ire. But without the heat of anger, a cold fear began to assert itself in her belly. As she spun, she had inhaled the stranger’s scent - the sharp cologne of stallion so strong that it almost completely masked the lighter perfumes of pine and hay. Iris paused. The fire still burned in her belly as the face of her captor swam before her eyes, but a second hunger overrode the desperate need to ascertain her freedom. Luthien. He must hail from Luthien. It helped to hold the terror at bay, but only just. She clung to thoughts of her family, of Gnome and Eve, and vowed that she would find them - and she would not allow herself to be stolen from their sides again.

”Wait - you’re from Luthien, aren’t you! Please, have you seen - have you -”

Iris’s voice became thick with impending tears, and then choked off completely. Her mahogany form began to tremble, knees buckling in an unspoken threat to dump her on the ground. But the dark mare had grown strong over the years, steel forged in the fires of adversity, and she wrenched back control of her body with an effort of will, standing strong and blinking furiously to clear her vision so her eyes could confirm what her heart already knew. A coat that was maybe a shade or two lighter than her own. A pure white blanket - like a drifting of snow - that dwarfed the one on her own flanks. And the speckling of white hairs that interspersed her earth-brown coat, more pronounced in her older age, but unmistakably Lily. Where Iris had been her father’s daughter with the exception of her eyes, Eve had always been a more harmonious blend of the two.

Eve? Unlike her sister, Iris managed to speak at a normal volume, though her tone did waver with emotion. As in her waking dream-memory, the seal-brown mare yearned to move forward, to join her sister, but found that her limbs had turned to stone. She couldn’t bear to look at Eve for much longer; tears were threatening again, and Iris was determined to remain strong. Instead, she turned her gaze to the stallion who still stood nearby, and a flicker of gratitude could be seen in their depths. Had it not been for him, she would never have turned around, even if she’d heard her sister’s soft voice. The voices and memories of her family had haunted her often, and when she’d reached out to touch them, vanished like the ghosts that they were. Heart suddenly beating rapidly, Iris realized that could just as easily be the case now, and grasped for something, anything, that would help to keep the memory alive longer.

Even a ghost was better than nothing at all.

”Look at us! Just as stupid as ever,” the older mare laughed, and with the sound the tears finally did start, silent and unnoticed. ”Dad would be rolling his eyes, and telling us that’s not how an introduction works. Of course we know each other, we’re supposed to be telling him who we are.” A hiccuping sob managed to break her careful composure, and then - strangely enough - turned into a laugh again. Iris finally found her legs, and they began to carry her forward - closer to the painted stallion and her sister both. But she stopped abruptly, right beyond the point of physical contact.

If Eve wasn’t real, she would sooner not know. Her heart could never bear it.



Iris

mare .. 9 years .. brown sabino blanket .. mutt .. 16.1 hands
Gnome x Lilika



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