elif
Elif’s life had always been filled with small adventures - rough-and-tumble through the narrow marketplace, petty thievery (usually only from her brother’s rooms), the small rebellions of a girl growing up in a noble house. She was always covered in nicks, rough-coated with sand and burrs, but never had she done anything grand.
Until the day they drove the blizzard-elk from Solterra, with Solis himself leading them on, and the queen beside him. And Elif had never felt so alive.
It had put a taste for adventure in her mouth, a want for more than the burnished treasures the court might otherwise hold for her. So when the crows gathered on the desert city’s copper rooftops and sandy walls and gave their invitation, the pegasus was thrilled. The wait had seemed an eternity - longer than the time it took the snow to melt, cool and blue on the desert’s hills.
But at last the day is come. And now she stands before another adventure (for such a strange gathering of horses, such a magical hedgerow and the strange lights that leak through the leaves, could be nothing else), her heartbeat like a bird’s in her chest, more eager than anything.
When Isra steps forward the young mare is silent, tucking her long wings against her narrow sides, bending her angular head as she listens. There is no fear in her, only excitement, and her grass-green eyes shift between the queen and the others until Isra says be brave. Oh, she is, she is -
She is one of the first to step into the maze.
The first thing she knows is darkness and quiet, though she can still hear the cacophony of sounds outside and the stars blaze above. But the leaves muffle the sounds, and she looks at the four pathways before her, and chooses.
Of course she picks the one bleeding heat. At once it swallows her up, the sun beating hot and familiar on her back. For a moment she stops to wonder at it, but even this magic cannot hold her still for long, not when she knows how much more must lie ahead. Like a hawk she sweeps through the path, her hooves quick and sure on the dirt, and then - oh! the world turns red as bleeding, scarlet as the wool she wears still around her neck.
Elif feels the first hint of fear when the lilies sprout, when the cicadas go to screaming - but it lessens when the strange mare blooms, too. Instead she drops her chin in honor, though her eyes do not leave her, and she inhales the smell of a wildflower meadow, sweeter than anything she has known.
At last she straightens, her grin as bright and fierce and bold as the sun around them. “I will not turn back,” she says, and waits to begin.
—second path
