jane
So this was Dusk. The word, the time, and the place. She had found herself in the swamps of the Dusk nation, and every step sucked at mud beneath her hooves. Latently, she wondered if she had wandered too far. But who cared, it wasn’t like she had anything waiting for her back home. No purpose, no lover, no one who cared about her. Maybe Galileo, but the truth was that it was lonely, Solterra. The whole of Novus was a lonely world that had no want for her in it. Sometimes she felt like she was an entree, something to digest while the world waited for the action to start.
This place was not the most beautiful that she had seen, but the time of day managed to turn it slightly elegant; the sunset shoved itself through the haze of fog and condensation. Jane felt it like sweat on her skin, climbing to her joints. It smelt of rain and musk, and in the faint corners of her eyes she imagined figments.
I should head home, I shouldn’t be here, Jane thought, stopping under a tree that looked remarkably akin to a crow’s foot in the way its black bark cracked and splintered as it curled. Yet there was peace in this place, and she managed to blend in. Dark coat was marred only by the rivers of gold that streaked her body.
Jane, came a voice, and she turned around suddenly, as it sounded like her mother. Her gaze fell upon a bird, a heron creeping through the undergrowth. It made eye contact with her for a moment, but clearly didn’t register her as a threat. A golden leg sank deep into muddy water, its feathers white yet speckled with mud. “You and me both, buddy,” Jane found herself saying, although she didn’t know what she meant. The heron regarded her lazily, its stance proud and arrogant. It cared for nothing, she thought, nothing beyond the next bug or fish that would keep it alive.
Jane glanced at the sky. She should have left hours ago, but yet she stayed. The moment of elegance had passed, and it was suddenly apparent that she may well be spending the next innumerable hours in a patch of mud. Oh well, whose loss was it really? Jane looked back to the heron and decided to stay near it. But as she decided that, a crack in the woods sounded and the bird took to flight.
Moonlight hissed through the trees like a rumour. One ear tipped back, and she remembered the last time she had been caught by a creature in the wild. At least now she was full bellied and slightly more toned, although starvation had certainly left its mark. She could at least try to trample a sand viper, but who knew what lived in these woods. Who knew what lay in wait, beneath the waters and the mud, watching her…
@[Ophelia] / speaks / here you go!
