I love you more in my head
but I’ll love you better when I’m dead
⬡ ⬡ ⬡
The altitude thinned out the warm mid-Fall air as Naydra climbed. She knew little of the Peak, and did not care to encroach upon their borders, but she was willing to toe the line a bit to escape the eyes of the Crossing bachelors. She followed the waterfall up the side of the mountain, creeping carefully over slick stones on the bank of the frothing rapids. The forest crept up the mountain with her, thinning slowly the higher she went, still dense and gold-red with autumn leaves.
Naydra slowed as the mountainside grew steeper. There were places the coal-black mare had to leap from stone to stone in order to continue, stones and dust cascading down the trail behind her. The trees grew twisted and stubborn, and far fewer as the soil thinned and gave way to stony terrain. The nimble mare had to halt after scrambling (somewhat gracefully, despite the unfriendly terrain) up onto a ledge, tucked into the face of the mountain like the last spit of hospitable earth before the borders of the Peak. The ledge was spacious enough for her to move comfortably around, and the humidity from the falls right next to it seemed to encourage some life to tough it out this high up. Grass grew in tenacious clusters, fighting for space with a few lucky shrubs and one incredibly persistent tree.
Naydra circled her ledge victoriously before approaching the edge and peering down. The pool into which the Falls deposited was dizzyingly small, but only because Naydra was unused to heights. Not afraid, no — at least not in any capacity she would admit, to herself or to a stranger. She kicked a rock down the mountainside, grinning at the satisfying few seconds of clatter before the inaudible splash as it ended its journey in the pool, silent beneath the roaring of the Falls.
She wondered if anyone would follow her up here. If they did, she would know immediately. One could hardly sneak up the side of a mountain; and if they tried, well… hardly a breath was needed to push them right back down again.
Naydra
mare. 16hh. silver black. rougaru x visurix.
