There is only one other place in Terrastella that Charlie likes to be that is not the docks. And that place is the home of the Halcyon, the barracks, the training grounds. The two places are very different. One meant for sea and one for air. Even so, both places carry the same kind of excitement. Both loud, and bustling, and filled with equines that the filly would like nothing more than to grow up to be.

On the docks, it’s one old grumpy sailor with the worst mouth Charlie thinks she’s ever heard.

In the Halcyon, it’s Commander Marisol.

The barracks is exactly where Charlie had been when the letter had been discovered. Not by one, but by many. Now, Charlie might not have learned to read very well yet (and even if she could, that’s not to say she would understand the short-hand, cryptically written message anyway) but enough of the adults were going on about it with her hanging out just around the side of the building that she thinks she understands enough. What with their own theories and her love of adventure, there was no better combination in the world but for her to go on this daring search.

So that’s what she’s done. Though the day is almost still dark it is too early, the young pegasus follows the coastline away from the court, her vermillion eyes sharp and bright, with Indy nestled between her shoulder blades. They don’t speak while she runs, her too-long legs and bottomless energy making relatively quick work of the fields.

Oh, she has poked around too much for her own good. If any adult had known how much she stuck her nose in places it surely didn’t belong, she would be grounded to the court with a guardian. Good thing she’s too smart for that. (Perhaps more that she would not listen regardless, and would find a way to go out if it killed her).

Soon she is standing before the graves, none of which she really knows who they belong to. Charlie assumes anyone of the court, but perhaps it is only the Halcyon who are buried here. She slows to a near-trot, passing stone after stone, marked, unmarked, old and newer. She can feel Indy stir and raises one wing for the young Osprey to perch upon.

”Do ya see it?”

“Um, no. They said it was near someone called… Lore-can.” She tries to say the name she heard the adults talk about, but she’s sure if anyone was around they would correct her. Instead, she focuses on trying to find any graves with an L on them.

When she finds it, it’s not because she spots a gravestone she’s able to read, but because she almost ends up inside the empty grave. Charlie struggles to keep her footing with only one wing to balance her, and without throwing Indy off the other, but somehow she scrabbles backwards enough that she only teeters for a few moments before finding solid ground again. Her chest heaves and she can feel Indy clinging so tightly to her wing it almost hurts. “Okay, that was close.”

”You can say that again,” the fledgling mutters, abandoning her place on Charlie’s wing for fear of another incident. Indy makes her way to Charlie’s poll instead, settling down among the mess of thick black hair. “Sorry, Indy,” the girl says, taking a few cautious steps back (the only she might ever make in her life).

And she stands there and stares at the empty grave and the stone at the head of it and tries to make out what is written on it. But still, she doesn’t get what’s so special about this place.

"Speaking."