She lands at the end of the bridge with eyes narrowed and her tail lashing from side to side, in the earliest light of the day when Ard has finally worn himself out to fall into a restful sleep. She has heard the whispers on everyone’s tongues, about the strange lava-rock bridge that stretched out into nowhere -- and indeed, even with her flight it had taken her plenty of time to traverse the air above, until it had been too difficult to fly and she had been forced to land instead.
lub-DUB, lub-DUB, lub-DUb.
Her heart beating in her ears, or perhaps it was the red berries that grew from a wall that denoted the end of the world -- she couldn’t be sure, anymore.
She turns away from the wall of death, and begins the long flight home to check on Ard, and to scour the marketplaces one more time in the foolish hope of finding Erd.
IN THE PARAMETERS OF CANVAS, THE COFFIN OF THE FRAME - the art of wreckage, how to figure ourselves in the ruins of what we can't traverse.
When the bridge is discovered the next morning, Locust is one of the first horses to venture out upon it. She’d slept on the shoreline, after all; the sounds of discovery woke her up. And what a discovery it was! A bridge that seemed to extend forever out into the sea, formed of some sort of glossy black substance. The air around it felt sticky and heavy, and she did not even have wings to know that she could not fly through it.
Locust stands in front of the bridge, and, with a hesitant look at the sea – which beats up against its edges, each lick of dark water like a hungry tongue, eager to pull it back beneath the surface – taps her hoof against the black-glass surface of the bridge. When it does not shatter beneath the weight of her tap (and she knew it wouldn’t, because she’d seen people embark on it already, but she still felt like testing it), she steps up onto the rough substance, grimacing at the pocks and dips in the surface. If there were places that the seawater actually washed over it, she was willing to bet that it would be frustratingly slick.
She is willing, she decides, to think of this as some kind of adventure. She prefers her adventures on the sea, where she has enough experience to maintain some semblance of control over most any bizarre or otherworldly occurrence she might encounter, rather than directly into the unknown (the bridge looks tenuous at best, and she means that in every conceivable way), but Locust has never been one to shy away from danger, particularly when it could come with interesting benefits. Sure, there was certainly something suspicious about a magical bridge that led off into the unknown which had, coincidentally, appeared the morning after a particularly striking, violent volcanic eruption, but she’d made a career of throwing caution to the wind. Perhaps, Locust thinks, there is something valuable on the other side of the bridge; perhaps it is a trap, but, if it is, she can deal with the consequences once she’s come to meet them. For now, she’d rather take the possibility of profit over the assurance of her own safety.
(Besides. When she passed through the Scarab that morning, when she was still debating whether or not she should take the bridge, she discovered that August was missing; presumably, that was where he’d gone. She hadn’t seem him since she’d docked, primarily due to her own negligence, and…
Who knew what was on the other end of that bridge?)
She clambers up onto the sleek surface and sets out on her way, her gaze cast towards the place where the dark strip of bridge is swallowed up by horizon and obscured entirely, as though covered in exceptionally thick fog. (It’s strange – she feels like she should be able to see further than this, and yet…the bridge seems to simply disappear, swallowed by sky and see. But, if it does, she supposes that she can always turn around.)
With that in mind, Locust sets off, long strides quickened by eagerness.
And, if she is not prepared for what she encounters along the way, then she is far too late to regret it.
|| for exp, 2/4. || "sea of ice," callie siskel "Speech!" ||
