[P] Summer Time Baby

[Maude]

The mother of the marsh was a small river, flowing like a blue ribbon through a tangle of trees.  Maude approaches it with her ears lifted and her step eager, more delighted by the sight of a forest than she initially registers, mostly because it was easier to assume she was simply glad to be out of the marsh, and onto drier land.   Her adventures so far have left her feeling much, much better about this place, Novus, than she had about the world of the trickster God.  The most terrible location she’d discovered so far was a swamp, after all, and even it hadn’t been so bad, once she’d been there a while.  The sound of the frog-song and the heady mist that layered the land was peaceful, and in definite contrast to this green world surrounding the trickle of the water, filled with the noise of birds and other animals.  She’d also found Finnian, who’d scared her at first, but had wound up being pretty nice.   The maiden lowers her muzzle to drink from the cool water flowing by her hooves, delighted at how clean it is.    Perhaps it is more of a creek, or a stream, she thinks to herself, recalling what she knew of bodies of water.  It wasn’t very wide or deep, after all, and even here, where the water was moving quickly, and causing white to crest atop its rushing length, she could see straight down to the water smoothed stones below.  Feeling an odd urge to shift through the rocks lining the bed of the brook, the girl does as she usually does, when met with a compulsion:  she obliges.   Humming as she shifts rocks this way and that, the girl can’t help but recall that the last time she’d done this, she’d done it with Kiada, to gather sea glass for the Moon Goddess’ temple.  Just like when she’d talked about the buildings back home, the people, or the pure happiness that she had held dear to her heart there, Maude quickly finds herself overwhelmed by the emotion that floods her.  Still, she’s getting much better at dealing with it; sniffling and humming along, anyway, despite the tears the slowly escape her attempts to hold them at bay, and the girl steadfastly refuses to look up from her rock gathering.   Soon, a small pile of pretty stones of various colors and shapes is piled up on the creek bed; unbroken geodes, quartz entwined in white, smooth stone, and raw agates fall into place among conglomerates and shale with shells embedded within the gray stone.  Her cheeks, however, are still damp, and her eyes refuse to dry, and in her heart, that hollow ache that the Goddess is dead still gnaws away inside her chest. [ OOC:  Just collecting rocks and crying in the middle of sex-city.  Don't mind us.  For @Eris, Raglan or Eden, either one! ]

Art by TheCallyBear@ DA