Falls

For a moment, the world hung suspended in what-ifs, the air heavy but unmoving. The storm overhead had threatened the season's first real snow for hours, the clouds dark and brooding. Far to the west, the waning winter sun hung low in the sky, casting long shadows that played dramatically against the impending darkness.

Grier watched it all quietly, her thoughts a thousand years away from now. Somewhere out there, the two halves of her heart were alone. Somewhere out there, they were living their lives without her.

She'd give anything to be somewhere out there with them.

The first flake of snow - fat and round in defiance of gravity - began to fall. As if this small leak was the puncturing of a dam, it's companions followed hard and fast. Within minutes, the sun had disappeared beneath the distant treeline, and the reddish pony mare was covered in a fine blanket of fluffy flakes.

She sighed, coming to life again, and refocused on her surroundings with a tired sort of wariness. Grier had never really gotten used to being on the Crossing, even though she'd spent the better part of a season here. The longer she spent here, the more she realized that she missed the small trappings of herd life. The relationships she made with the women - Zjeena and Monster and Titania. The passing almost-interest of the men - Rougaru and Liland. Most of all, she missed the children. Not only her own, but everyone else's too. With Pidgeon gone, it felt like too much of a betrayal to seek another one out without her, but Grier ached for the sound of a suckling child's laughter.

Perhaps that was why the pony had tempted the fates by choosing the Crossing throughout autumn. She had known that Pidgeon would not come to the Crossing herself, not with Rougaru still looking for her, but she had run out of places to look in the Thicket. Now, she had run out of places to look on the Crossing.

Numb and tired, the reddish woman dropped her gaze from the orange-gold sunset and began to graze, not yet ready to let go of her thoughts.