Falls

Ultimately, convincing her mother to venture down the mountainside and away from the safety of the Peak had been easier than Izzy thought it would be.

The idea had begun after the third straight night of terrible dreams, each awful rendition of the events of the raid played out in greater and greater intensity so that Izzy woke with her throat gone raw from trying to scream, panting as if she'd run a great distance and unable to utter anything but the smallest of sounds when her dam tried to offer comfort. Rhadra finally started telling her stories: first the silly tales she'd shared to lull Izzy to sleep when she was very young, but then more serious tellings when it became clear such childish adventures did nothing to ease the panic and upset that set the bay girl's whole body rigid where it lay on the grass.

Rhadra spoke of Izzy's father, and the special, secret glade where they met, her warm voice full of awe and love and that eased the drumming of Izzy's frantic heart, slowing it to an erratic tempo driven by the idea of love, and touch, and the terrible shiver rocketing down her spine whenever she thought of that stallion. So the seed had been planted, and each night when she inevitably woke hoarse and trembling, she'd beg Rhadra to tell her again of the day her mother and father met, until finally one balmy afternoon late in the season, Izzy requested they take a quick trip down from the Peak, just the two of them, to go see that special secret glade. Rhadra had resisted at first, claiming Jay would be lonely without them and then fretting over the wisdom of such an adventure even though the raid had happened weeks ago, but Izzy kept on asking, wheedling a little more each time, and finally won from her mother a favorable decision by supposing, idly, how nice it would be to find her father there. Maybe she'd let a ghost of the fear that sat like a rock in her chest pass over her face as she looked into the distance, and maybe she'd meant for her mother to see it; whichever the reason, Rhadra finally relented and led the way down from their comfortable home in the bowl of the mountain and down to the valleys and hills which rolled into the social lands of the Crossing.

The bay yearling keeps close to her mother's hip as they walk steadily further away from the only place of safety Izzy has ever known, but every time she glances over her shoulder the mountain looks as big as it did several steps before, and soon she is jogging a few steps ahead of and to the side of her dam as her ears lift and her head swivels with an open, easy curiosity more befitting the young filly she'd been before the raid. Rhadra's pace lags when her daughter shows a deeper interest in the landscape they traverse, so by the time they reach the glade it is nearer to evening than noon.

Izzy stands back as her mother enter the shady grove, flaring her small, dark nostrils to test the air for the tell-tale scent of stallion Rhadra is adamant is still detectable. All Izzy smells is the dead loam on the floor of the little grove and the stifled heat hanging under the thick branches. She pokes her head in only briefly: it is a dark, dull place lacking in all the romanticism promised by her mother's tales. Her gaze flicks to Rhadra: the black mare is preoccupied by memory, her eyes half-closed and distant, and Izzy backs out of the grove quietly. The thrum of adrenaline heightens rapidly within her, and swift and quietly as she can she turns and hurries deeper into the Falls.

One ear she keeps trained behind her, wary of her mother's pursuit as she follows a well-traveled path which winds between the loosely-spaced trees. Never before has Izzy disappeared like this, not even as a joke, and she has no way of knowing what her mother's reaction will be: rage and discipline? Or fear and fretting? Not-knowing is almost as thrilling as traveling an unknown path in an unknown land all alone. Izzy glances once behind her, quickly, as if to reassure herself the mountain is still there: it is, backlit by the descending sun. Momentarily blinded by that brilliant red orb, Izzy halts stiff-legged and stands in the middle of the trail, blinking furiously to rid the dazzle from her eyes while her ears twitch and swivel to catch the slightest of sounds.