so you were born, and that was a good day
someday you'll die, and that is a shame
but somewhere in the between was a life of which we all dream
and nothing and no one will ever take that away
Sleia's eyes lit up as they met Talya's, eager and relieved to have so quickly found a kindred spirit of sorts on the islands. Here was a mare whose arrival had come without cautionary tales of the horrors taking place just out of sight and whose words burst forth without the oppressiveness of melancholy. Innocent though it was, the moon-splashed mare's motive was entirely pure. Sleia could appreciate that after the life she had expended so much effort to escape.
"I'd love to!" she chirped, mirroring Talya's excitement. One's usefulness as a friend scarcely entered her mind - she was as yet too naïve to consider the political implications of her actions beyond how they might personally affect her, and it didn't even seem particularly problematic that the other mare had not even given her a name yet. Perhaps one day she might pause to weigh such concerns, but she hoped for her own sake that she would never stoop so low as to extinguish the hope in those brilliant blue eyes for the sake of a paltry boost in political street cred.
She'd rather play hide and seek. She'd rather play chase. She'd rather live in a world where such harmless diversions were commonplace.
What Björn had said about the goings-on just one beach over, in the Common, continued to nibble uncomfortably at the corners of her mind like moths after parchment. There were still forces at work of which she was unaware, and chances were that Talya didn't know much about them either. Had Sleia known, she would have been much less ostentatious upon her arrival to the Meadow herself. "What's your name, friend? If I find Nobody, I'd love to let her know you've been looking for her."
sleia *
hope is a butterfly, no net its captor