As the gears of the year turn and winter settles inexorably into place, Rille returns to the Crossing.
It is early enough yet in the season to merit such a visit: if not for the rime lacing the tops of every outstretched branch or the frigid plume announcing every exhale of every thing that breathes, one might say today still belongs to autumn. It is not snow that coats the grass but a fine layer of frost, and where the hooves of any have tread a long stretch of green marks their path: so many of these crisscross over and beside one another, the field is a patchwork of winter's first attempt to blanket. Rille's gaze flicks upward as he ambles through the field. There will likely not be snow today: the sky is clear, a dazzling and pristine blue arcing far over the Meadow.
There stands, at the abrupt end of one vivid green swath, a mare the color of a late autumn storm cloud, warm and dusky. She stands hipshot and apparently half-awake, looking for all the world like she's just stepped down from that azure plane to enjoy a nap while securely anchored to the earth. Every now and again her ears turn in idle awareness of what surrounds her— which is, by and large, a mostly empty field, through which Rille feels he is now trespassing as each sweep of his wide feathered hooves through the crisp grass disturbs the cold, crystalline quiet draped between them.
She looks so serene, standing there, that Rille cannot help but alter his path to join her, drawn to her meditative attitude and desiring to share it. He settles a few paces before the mare and spends a moment observing her breathing, likewise trying to ascertain if there is a pattern to what makes her ears turn or if she is perhaps listening to a more subtle current of the world than what he himself has been able to register. Rille turns his ears outward and lets his eyelids slide more or less closed as his breathing deepens, and, following the lead of the mare before him, listens.