"Just give me the world and I will give it back to you
Just tell me it hurts and I will fix it for you"
The forest was alive with sound, but half of it only the young doe could here. Her ears twirled, both sets spinning wildly as she tried to take in every soft whispered greeting, as leaves swayed in the wind. Every high pitched gossip of bushes, every eager compliment of a flower to win her favor. The whispered, and almost seemed to work above the sounds of the very earth that yielded to her step. But she didn't hesitate, she didn't pause, her limbs carrying her further until she finally hit the forest. A collective sigh of welcome, trees whispering softly in welcome for her return. Whispered excitement, whispered wonder. Branches seemed to crunch and gently stretch towards her, almost unnoticeable, even as she felt the twins brush her hide, the leaves lean into her returned brush of pelt against bark, "Yes, yes, I missed you too." She mused delicately to the forest that seemed to hum with brighter, and warmer energy. The ley lines of the natural energies, the very life giving magic that swirled around her on a metaphysical level.
Her eyes closed, the slight sparkling of energies wafting over her pelt, clinging to her body like the possessive energy it was. She pretended to ignore the slightly fuzzy, static feeling it presented, instead of letting her awareness spread out, tracing the lines of natural flowing magic - zipping along the natural currents from tree grouping to tree grouping, from plant to plant, to every shrub bush, and every patch of flowers, reacquainting herself first with the forest of her home, the home she'd taken into her heart when she'd tumbled into this world, head over hoof. Once she was certain that she had resettled her awareness to the forest, retouched and reconnected with it as she had before she'd gone to the ley lines, disappeared into the energies for a long rest. Only then did she follow the lines to the brighter spots of energy, the individual animals, silently accounting for the different creatures, knowing where friend and were foe might be. As the forest around her seemed to sigh at the re-established connection, as Cally herself let the very magic of the forest that anchored life to earth flow through her did she open her eyes again. Briefly, that sparkle along her pelt was visible in her eyes before she blinked a few times and her awareness settled.
It was an odd thought to have, how part of her awareness was within the magic, the other part was within her body. A silent touch of acknowledgment, letting the energies, the flow of that natural magic work straight through her own body, anchoring her to it. She settled in her own body again, stretching her neck, rolling her shoulders before her cloven hooves kicked up, carrying her along Delumine, looking now for someone to talk to, to let her know what might have changed, what was still the same. She had, after all, been asleep within the earth, within the very magical flow of life forces for so long. Even now, the scent rolling over her spoke of a new royal in Delumine, perhaps she needed to search that fact out at some point, as well, a casual introduction. But for now, just more knowledge on what she had missed out on would be enough.
And after sleeping within the ley lines for so long, she was ready for some company anyway.
please pray for your boy because i am drowning in the water,
I’d never understood what was so great about the woods, or the outside in general. If anything, I’d have to say the fresh air, but anything had to be better than sitting in your own juices and breathing in old book-dust for sixteen hours a day like at that boarding school. Even the psychiatrist’s office smelt sterile and white. The closest I’d ever come to good fresh air was my aunt’s estate, but it was ruined by my cousins swimming in clouds of perfume, and the moldering of algae at the bottom of one of Aunt Angelica’s too-many fountains, and the cultivated, rectangular bushes of white roses that made everything rank like a funeral parlor.
Maybe there was no good air in the world, anymore. Even out here in the Viride, under the branches covered in winestain leaves, it just smells like wet and dirt and earth. Slimy moss sticks to my feet as I pick my way around raised roots and trees tilted sideways with time. Fig-colored pricker bushes grew in great clumps, thin tendrils turning back in on themselves and looking like my thoughts, half the time. I admit, when I ran away I had a plan, but that plan had just been to run away. Now I am away, and it doesn’t really hold water anymore. No one talks about what to do once you’re away. They just talk about getting there
“Shit!” I hiss as a thorn an inch long slices a line in the white of my hock. Crimson beads there and I frown, unsure as to why I came here. The group I traveled with since running away had dispersed back at the Rapax, with half of us crossing it and half of us following it up. I didn’t know their names and they hadn’t asked mine. No one waggled an eyebrow when I burnt my journal. It was supposed to be symbolic, I think, but now all I feel is regretful.
I swung my head through a swarm of midges and pressed on up a gentle slope. I cut through more prickers and didn’t cuss this time. It was important for me to go off the beaten path because I was still in Delumine and I’m sure my family had sent someone after me. Or maybe they didn’t. Maybe they were happy I was gone. I smile at that thought because, screw ‘em. But more than likely they sent someone to hunt me down and bring me back, a retainer or a guard or a hired assassin. My mom was messed up like that.
I’d been missing for a few weeks now and it only should’ve taken me eight days at most to make it to Dimetria’s estate so by now they knew something was up. A knot twists in my stomach because my sister’s probably worried about me. I feel bad for that bit, for Dimmy and Sazurain, because they’ve never done anything but love me but also they don’t have spines, so, screw ‘em, too.
Maybe my escape will help them escape.
I crush through some maple tree saplings that bend and snap back to whip me painfully but I bite the curse that comes to my lips because there’s someone else here; a deer with a horn. I squint, because that’s normal, deers have horns, but this seems weird. It’s only after I stare a bit that I finally ask, “What are you?” and I’m so overwhelmed with curiosity that I don’t even care if it’s rude or not.
"Just give me the world and I will give it back to you
Just tell me it hurts and I will fix it for you"
There was a brush, a flash of magic in the ley lines, a loss of the natural flow of energy that acknowledge was a wound. Focusing on it however alerted the doe of a larger being with the slightest wound, and she immediately dismissed the scratch once aware it wasn't an injury more serious to a smaller animal. Not that she could do much. After that first initial flash of power, when she'd healed the wolf as her magic had finally been unlocked from it's cage - the healing abilities seemed firmly under wraps, forcing her to retrain the magic as it had mutated itself into for this odd world. It was a step by step system to relearn how to work the magic she'd previously used with out thinking, to see what shape it took now, what she could easily utilize and what she couldn't.
Her intention returned to the earth, letting the trees and foliage of the forest fill her with the secrets of what had happened while she was gone, even as she searched for a real source of information (preferably not one as gossipy as trees could be. They could be like quite the elderly pair of grandmas content with telling you everyone's dirty secrets). The alert from the trees spoke of the other's arrival before she heard them however, voices crying out as they were bend and pushed through, young saplings crying over broken twigs while the older trees tried to reassure the little ones it would grow back stronger than before.
Cally turned to meet the approaching individual instead, tilting her head when they broke through the foliage and seemed to come to a stop, staring at her as well. Cally didn't say anything as she took in the fairly normal looking mare (normal compared to some of the others the young doe had come across, at least). More normal than she certainly. At the other's sudden question, Cally blinked in surprise - not at perceived rudeness, but rather at the surprise of being asked the very same question Cally had previously asked her own reflection when she'd first woken up in this world.
She tilted her head, muzzle twisting in a sarcastic grin, "The product of a jealous fight between two realities, and their respective gods." She responded with a huff, "Magic played tug-a-war, and I definitely wasn't the winner." She added, shrugging, "Blaming magic and the gods seem easiest anyway." She paused, eyeing the mare, before sighing, "I'm Callynite, previously a deer, now some tragic mess caught between a deer and a . . . . pony? maybe? Small horse? Not sure." She paused as the trees seemed to clink around them, the twigs swaying in the breeze, scraping together. But only one of the two would hear the voices.
"You're not fond of the forest are you? Or perhaps . . . just not familiar with how to make your way through it?" She shrugged, silent as the trees and foliage whispered again, her ears flicking to catch each sound, "What are you doing out here? Definitely not your first time through these woods with how often you seemed to be crunching through the saplings?" So maybe she knew a little more than any other, but trees were gossips after all. At least no one was around to hear what they had to say about HER.
please pray for your boy because i am drowning in the water,
My feet were filled with stinging and I had a terrible thought that it would hurt forever. It was an exhausting thing to think, and I was already exhausted enough. Still, anything was better than sitting prettily at the dinner table waiting for the servants to set the places and for father and mother’s to remain empty. Nothing worse than sitting alone at a banquet table while your maid lingers behind you to dab your mouth at the first sign of a mess. Nothing worse than being alone but not really being alone.
I waited for the stranger to clue me in on exactly what I was dealing with. The deer-horse thing’s face warped with a weird smile and I squinted through one eye, confused. Maybe they were trying to look intimidating? It wasn’t working. A little creepy, maybe. But I’ve seen mother angry and there’s not a thing in this world that can compare, hybrid mystery beast or no.
Both my eyes squeezed almost-shut, just a centimeter of judgy blue apart, when they got philosophical on me. I hate that. Then the shroud of mysticism seemed to drop and they shrugged, explaining blaming the gods was the easiest course of action. “I’d blame my mother and father,” I said, simplifying the problem down to it’s basic terms, different realities and alternate universes aside. That seemed like a children’s story and I hadn’t been allowed to read those.
Looking a bit closer, I stepped forward to get a different angle of her; she introduced herself as Callynite. My head tilted to get a better look at her, take more of her in. Small and knobby and striped. Then it was my turn to shrug. “I’ve seen worse tragedies,” I said. She kept doing odd things, like striking her ears at off angles as though trying to hear something very far away. In that way she did remind me of a deer, or some other prey animal, constantly listening for the approach of something that wanted to eat her.
It reminded me I was also being hunted.
Callynite guessed I had no idea what I was doing. “Those things are not mutually exclusive. Yes.” Though I wasn’t really sure if I could ever love the forest. Wouldn’t that just set mother’s eyes a-boggle? Her baby daughter gone to the dirt, a wild forest nymph. I snorted.
She asked what I was doing and I shrugged. What would she think if I told her the truth? “I was travelling with a party out of the capital and we all went our separate ways.” Not a lie. “I’m just… gathering experiences.” Also not a lie. I swiveled my head with intent, aiming to turn things back on her. “And with all your profound knowledge,” the sarcasm was heavy with this one, but a flat kind, deadpan, the kind that went over most heads, “I imagine you’re out here playing glade keeper? Queen of the forest fairy?” More storybook stuff. I’d never been allowed to read them.
But then, I’d never been allowed to experience real life, either. Maybe these things were also not mutually exclusive.
let me stay where the wind will whisper to me
where the raindrops, as they're falling, tell a story
Callynite
in my field of paper flowers, and candy clouds of lullaby
i lie inside myself for hours and watch my purple sky fly over me
The doe tilted her head, before a slight frown touched her muzzle, the telltale sign of an unwanted past, "My parents are the cause of many issues, but I can't blame them for the way I look now. Though mother would likely have a fit to see my appearance now. She always demanded perfection, unfortunately. I don't think appearing a hybrid would fit her picture-perfect image for my future." Oh, to be honest, her mother would have a lot to say about Cally's life. From the fact, her magic was 'corrupt' now. To her appearance. To the fact, she carried a bow and quiver of arrows, to her desire to constantly go on adventures. It'd be quite the heart attack for the doe that had raised her, learning that her fawn had ended up just like the buck who'd helped conceived her, even after her mother ran him off. Cally enjoyed being more like her father, regardless.
Better to be more like him, than a self-centered, narcissistic witch like the doe that raised her. She turned her attention back to this other, however, introducing herself, before blinking at the other's response, before managing a slight, but amused smile. Worse tragedies, huh? Cally would take it as a compliment, even if some of the flowers were chiding the stranger for her remarks, and a few trees were whispering to others further away about the going-ons. 'Worse Tragedies' indeed. But the deer didn't let it bother her, er, deer-hybrid. She knew she was a bit different from most.
Cally did frown slightly at the idea of going out into the forest, and then going separate ways, "You . . . went . . . out traveling, and then went separate ways, leaving you to solo the trek through the forest that you're not familiar with?" She asked, snorting slightly, "I mean, all the power to you for bravery and whatnot, but don't you think it's a bit foolish?" Okay so the sarcasm was annoying to the former druid. Profound knowledge of the earth - why yes, yes she did. She was a former nature goddess after all, and a druid in the life after that, the life that melded into this one. And so of course, when the other asked if she was glade keeper, queen of the forest fairy, Cally didn't hesitate to smirk.
Instead, she let the magic flow, tapping into the ley lines, the magical flow of natural energy. The green aura of the raw magic crackling around her pelt, flowers and foilage blooming up in rapid succession around her hooves, around her in a small radius, as the trees seemed to bend towards her, as flowers visibly snuggled up against her limbs, petals wrapping around ankles, "Not quite a fairy, and keeper of far more than a mere glade." The druid replied, the same green aura of natural magic glowing from within her eyes, before she allowed the power to display, as she shook the now pouting flowers off of her, "Either way, I know the earth better than most. If you're struggling to find a guide through the forest, I mean . . ." The offer was unspoken, but delivered in the way to make the request be necessary either way.
