Falls

long-lost firstborn of titania and rougaru

🙐---🙖





"Oh!"

Faline lifts her head with a start, staring wide-eyed at the pale-maned girl approaching. Her heart pounds in her chest, startled into a frantic rhythm; she hadn't expected anyone to answer her - at least, not anyone tangible, but she supposed if she had to interact with a stranger, she couldn't have asked for a better one. Mares, at least, she had some experience with. Stallions? She didn't even want to think about it. Just the thought of them was terrifying - and, she loathed to admit, exciting - enough to send her into a cold sweat.

Faline shivers, both from the cold and from her own thoughts, and tries to clear her head. Mare or otherwise, she can't tell someone she just met that she was talking to the memory of her missing dam - that would be weird. "I... I-I can't remember," she fibs, awkward and shy, and presses her ears back, bowing her neck in chagrin. "I'm sorry, I didn't know anyone else was here..."

So much for experience, she scolds herself internally, snapping her tail against her haunches.

Be cool, she thinks as the green-eyed filly stops nearby, fighting the urge to flee. Be cool, as they take a few quiet moments to size each other up, the wintry air around them still but for the sound of their soft breaths. Faline realizes now that she knows how to socialize with her family more than anything, those with whom she'd spent her whole life, who had seen her at her best and at her worst, whether they liked it or not, by virtue of their bonds. She'd had very little practice with horses her own age who didn't have to like her purely because they were her sisters.

At least, not as far as anyone could tell.

Faline acquiesces to the stranger's offered greeting, feeling lamer than ever. She exchanges breaths, but quickly, and jerks her muzzle back to her chest soon after, cheeks too hot with embarrassment to pick up the familiarity in mare's floral-laced scent. Her golden eyes search the forest floor, wishing it would swallow her up. She doesn't get to wallow in self-pity for long, though, ears tipping forward to catch the girl's next question, and when she processes what she's just been asked, her gaze flicks up, mirroring the frown that meets her with one of her own.

Did someone hurt you?

"No," she replies, confused. Not physically. Besides the occasional friendly practice spars, she'd never had anyone lift a hoof to hurt her. But then she chews on it, looks around at the remnants of her fabled hiding spot, and remembers Titania's spangled form as she had seen it last, disappearing into the underbrush away from her.

Faline's birth mother had tried her best, then, sacrificing it all to keep her daughter safe and out of harm's way. She had been forced to make a hard choice, and she did it with the information and experience she'd had at the time. For that, Faline was grateful; her upbringing certainly had been safe, and even without her mother, she had been loved, and cared for, and had never needed for anything under the safety of the Amazon women. But she'd be a liar if she said there weren't times that she wondered what life would have been like, had Titania taken her along instead of leaving her back here on the Crossing. Wherever they'd be - whatever they'd be doing, at least they would have had each other, and maybe that would have been enough.

"...yes."

Lost in thought, chewing on the grief and the anger and the speculation at what could have been, Faline looks to the ground, refusing to meet the mare's eyes. Not soon after, though, comes a cloud of fog swirling around her legs from her companion's warm breath, and the sudden rush of cold as her exhale leaves the space between them is enough to break her out of her reverie once more. She realizes - too late - that she's been standing there in silence, rudely plugging the flow of the conversation, and rushes to correct herself, her words coming from her freckled lips in one loud outburst.

"I'MFALINE!" she blurts, wondering just how much more she can mess this up. "W-what's your name?"

Finally, she's said something normal. Seventh time's the charm... (Is it too late, she wonders, to go running back to the Peak, and forget this whole thing happened?)





🙐---🙖




faline

every tear’s a waterfall