Meadow

She doesn’t need his reassurance, her dark eyes turn away from him and sweep over the long meadow. Even his good natured teasing rolls off her. Echidna flicks a golden ear towards him and her body shifts only slightly, letting her hind hoof prop itself up on the toe.

This world is much different than the one she is used to. Before the water spat her back up into these mysterious islands, she had lived in the cold and in the heat—she had seen kings and mountains and entire herds laid to waste. Echidna remembered love but mostly hate, she couldn’t recall what it felt like to enjoy company at all. There were too many savage years between herself and peaceful companionship.

She turns her head towards him and the moon catches the bridge of her nose, the golden trail of her face. “Nowhere in particular,” she tells him softly and it is more than the truth. Echidna has no place to go, no place she is looking for. Left to wander the unknown.

He is a great, hulking thing and she feels the heat from off his body. It reminds her of something so far gone now that it is like a haze in her mind.

“If you want to come with me,” she lifts her chin and her eyes glitter, “then just say so.” Echidna snakes her little head out and clacks her teeth at him, ears bent back against her neck. Not in warning or dislike, but a solid tease of her own kind.

“Echidna,” it comes from her like stones falling from a high place and she is moving away from out towards the open space in front of them. “That’s my name, or that’s what they called me a very long time ago but no one has said my name in so long now that it feels strange to me.”