[TW] heart

[Samaira]

You are light, You are poetry
Every breath you breathe is art
All your wildest dreams already are

Samaira has never been this far north before, as her wings carry her out over the swamps of Tinea and into gradually more open lands. She’s gone eastward, once, but it was a short trip that was mostly overcome by her feelings of being able to fly for one of the first times.

Though she will never get used to the sensation, never grow tired of feeling the wind pass through her feathers, it brings her a much calmer sense of joy than outright excitement these days. Flying is her safe place.

She touches down beside a creek, winding south through the trees. From above she could see it lets out into the ocean. “Alaunus, do you suppose we might find anything useful along the bank?” she says, turning toward her companion as he alights beside her. He fluffs his feathers and begins to preen, thinking. “The moist, presumably rich earth beside the water would be a great place for plants to grow. Best to search where the sun reaches the most,” the young heron suggests.

Samaira lifts her head, silver eyes looking between the trunks of trees. She is very familiar with forests in general, and to be sure even as a girl she knew basic herbs intended for salving small wounds or aiding in an aching stomach—a side effect of living in the wild, her parents had always wanted her to be prepared.

However, she still had much to learn about more advanced herbs, and the doctors were discussing some they needed stocked back up. Traditionally a medic wouldn’t go gathering, but she has no more patients and will happily take any excuse to go for a flight, no matter how short. She had readily volunteered, and here they are now.

“Let’s try this way, it seems like there’s a bit of a clearing there,” Samaira says, spotting what the pegasus assumes is a break in the trees from the brighter light pouring it, compared to the shadowyness surrounding them.

When she steps on the twig, Samaira thinks nothing of it, really. Until she hears the voice.

“Who is it?” Her ears lift on her head and, Alaunus who walks beside her suddenly stops. She can feel his apprehension even without him speaking. Their voice, whoever it is, both sends a chill up her spine and somehow, breaks her heart. She steps more carefully, pressing into the light.

“It’s alright, we won’t hurt you,” she says, her accented voice smoky and low, “My name is Samaira, and I’ve my bonded here, Alaunus.” The earthen woman thinks she can smell the metallic tang of blood in the air, but it’s difficult to tell beneath the brine of the sea and the other summer scents of the woods. “Are you injured?”

"Speaking."

credits | @Messalina <3