I love you more in my head
but I’ll love you better when I’m dead
⬡ ⬡ ⬡
((setting this in very early fall))
Naydra knows she can only hide from the bachelors for so long. She has no idea if the one who took her from the Peak has traded a recruit for the privilege of exclusivity to her, but she isn’t about to ask, and she doesn’t want to find out. They’ve left her alone up until this point, but now she’s in season, and her solitude will not last.
She breaks from the Lagoon as soon as she feels the familiar gnawing ache of Fall. It’s the middle of the night, and she can practically feel the breath of the dogs on her heels as she scurries through the dark jungle. She breaks from the humid foliage, taking in the changing landscape as the vegetation thins out and the ground dries. Yellowing leaves brush her back and sides instead of hanging moss and ferns, and sturdy grass tickles her muzzle when she lowers it to scent for him.
Naydra knows he’s here. She’s seen the signs he’s left her; a meticulously placed autumn leaf where there shouldn’t be one was blazing neon to her, despite Starscream’s careful lack of scent trail. She knows what they mean.
Finding him might have been a puzzle, if she were anyone else, but Naydra knows Starscream. They belong to each other. There is only one place he will be waiting, and though she doesn’t pick up his trail until she is painfully close, she never doubts.
The coal-black mare makes for the Falls, and then skirts them. She climbs the moisture-slick rocks that cradle the silken cascade, and then keeps going, beyond the mouth of the waterfall. It isn’t quite the Peak’s domain, but it’s close enough; it’s sort of a no-man’s land between the common areas and the sisters’ border. It’s difficult to reach, and a dead end at that. The path does not continue up the mountain, so it receives no traffic from the witches. It’s far out of the way of the common areas, so it receives no traffic from anywhere else. It is, as she expected, empty and neglected, but it’s here, where the path grows especially obscure and treacherous, that she picks up Starscream’s trail.
“My love,” she hisses, slipping forward into the darkness of the shallow cave. Her honey-gold eyes glint against the shadows, a greedy smile pulling the corners of her lips toward the moon. “You called me?”
Naydra
mare. 16hh. silver black. rougaru x visurix.
