Corazon thought she knew the color green.
She had thought she was familiar with the dusty, neutral tones of growth and nourishment. Sure, Cora had been aware of islands where there was more, but in her mind, those places were honey-colored stone canyons covered in great swathes of thick, waxy succulent plants and tall cacti. She hadn’t imagined much variety, just more volume.
The Crossing, when she had arrived in late Summer, had halted her breath with its meadows and forests. She hadn’t even known what to do with herself the first few days, and simply hung out on the beach, where she was familiar with open skies and stretches of sand. Eventually, though, she had ventured inland and made herself familiar with the claustrophobic trees and the chilly shade.
Now that Fall had all but packed up and moved out, Corazon finds her shaky comfort in the shelter of the Crossing’s forests dwindling. The air is becoming colder than she has ever experienced, and all the lovely green has fled, buried beneath dead leaves that crunch unsettlingly beneath her charcoal hooves. It’s a bit better in the Meadow and Common, where the trees are not clustered so closely together and most of the grass is uncovered by leaves. In the Meadow, though, there are dead flowers, which is even more depressing.
Corazon lips apathetically at some of the Common’s remaining green shoots, her front legs barely over the border that separates the ‘danger’ zone from the rest of the island. She’s avoided it throughout the autumn for obvious reasons, but now that winter is settling in and chasing off the pheromones with a biting wind, she assumes the danger has passed, and congratulates her young self for successfully remaining untouched.
It’s a small victory, though, and her mental celebration is tiny and rather lame. She sighs, pulling up a few wilted but still rather lively bites of grass, and lets her bored mind wander.
Corazon
whisper, scream, i'm listening