[SOLO] the spinning of the seasons

[Mima]

[imgright]http://matope.pixel-blueberry.com/image ... uncert.png[/imgright]The Height Of Winter.

She had lived in this dreadful cold her whole life.

Why, then, did it feel so especially biting now?

Her wounds, fresh and old alike, seemed to ache with the winter chill in the air.

She hadn't told her tribe she was leaving. There had not been a point. She knew full well that they did not truly want her there in the first place. That she was nothing more than a weapon to them, a weapon that terrified them to have even though she was on their side. With sharp hooves and horns that killed and smashed until she was broken and bloody, and yet somehow she always pushed herself even further.

While Sleeping Terror was not an exile for any one crime, she knew all too well the weight of her misdeeds piled up on her back one after the other, melting and refreezing like the winter snow and ice. While her murder would not have been so heinous for any other totoma, it was just the heaviest snow packed on her back yet. The little bit of extra weight that had caused the avalanche of emotions to reach its peak within her little mind.

She had not been told to leave. And she did not know where she was going.

She was aimless, and it scared her.

[Mima]

The trek down the mountains was as perilous as it was arduous. She had made an obvious mistake starting it in the middle of the night, but Sleeping Terror was not one to go back on her decisions easily. This, too, she knew was a fault of hers- but it was a fault she felt more proud of than any other, a fault she'd never wish to unlearn. A fault that, for once, she was proud to have.

Each step down the face of the cliff felt more dangerous than the last, her hoof-falls ever heavier and heavier as fatigue and hunger overcame her. She told herself time and time again that food was so much more plentiful at the bottom of the mountains where the plains met them in lush, green valleys. Ones that grew thick with plants and grasses even in the depths of winter like this. She need only make it there.

A rock that crumbled under her hoof made her heart skip a beat, echoing down the side of the mountain into nothingness far out of sight. She told herself that, but it was a long way down, wasn't it? A long way down to walk, and an even longer way down to fall. Well, assuming what the Zikwa said was true, her soul would be falling straight into another body, since she certainly hadn't made it to "enlightenment" in this life.

The winter wind that howled in her ears returned to being her only companion.

All to herself, she hummed along to its melody. It, at least, felt no guilt in keeping her company.

[Mima]

Her hoof prints stained the snow red with blood.

The hare she'd killed was a juvenile, a snack more than a meal. She had lost much of her coordination in the journey, stripped away from her like she'd shed her winter wool against the rocks in the summer. It was cold, and her legs were numb yet sore all at once. The skin was numb, but the bones inside hurt like no wound she'd ever felt before.

She was all at once desperate for the pain to stop, and horridly restless.

Sickening, bone-crunching sounds echoed from the small cavern she had stopped to rest in as she tore into her meal, ravenously. Ripped fur from skin, skin from flesh, and chewed bones and flesh all as one whole. What was her meal but one more life she had to end to move forward? What was there to life besides hurting others? Killing innocent things, hurting friends, destroying the present in order to create the future?

She didn't know.

Despite her instincts telling her not to, she shifted and rested her head, falling into a deep, hazy sleep.

[Mima]

Sleeping Terror's dreams weren't quite as colorful as those of the Zikwa of the caves below, but that wasn't to say she didn't have any dreams at all.

Quite the opposite. Sleeping Terror dreamed quite a bit, though that wasn't to say all her dreams were pleasant. Oftentimes she dreamed of fighting, and oftentimes she dreamed of floating. Sometimes through the water, sometimes through the air. The dreams she cherished most were the dreams of spring, the dreams that kept her sane through the winter months. She dreamed of a spring far more lush than the one in reality, this high up the mountain.

But tonight, all was blue and cold.

When she looked up, she could see the moon, but it was far, far away. Her neck moved like wading through heavy snow. She was not drowning, but she was undoubtedly underwater. But she did not float. No, today she was sunken like a rock in a river stream. A great and powerful river, larger than she had ever seen in the mountains. And she was being swept up in it.

She fought against the current as best she could, crawling and struggling against the slick stone beneath her hooves that seemed to fall away like powder snow. It was not enough. No matter how tightly she clung to the ground, no matter how much she reached for the surface...

She was dragged along through the rapids, unable to fight back. Crashing painfully down waterfalls and over sharp stones she could find no purchase against, she was dizzy and lost. There was no choosing where she was going now- only fighting for her life.

Her eyes snapped open before she came to rest on any shore, the sun above a blinding white and hideous red against the freshly fallen snow and freshly spilled blood outside.

[Mima]

The red on her hooves was her own blood, now.

She felt as though she had been walking longer than she had not been. Her hooves didn't ache any more, but she was viscerally aware they were cracked and broken, spitting out blood here and there on the snow behind her. Though she had started out counting the number of times the sun had risen and fallen in her journey, Sleeping Terror had lost track soon after it became too many to count on her horns and hooves. Her whole life seemed to blend together into a mix of colors and seasons that simply existed as now and not now, the past a nebulous thing that was somehow unreal to her, all the same as her dreams.

She kept reminding herself of the basics- I am called Sleeping Terror. I don't know if I'd say it's my name, but that is what I am called. Oh, she wished she knew. What luxury the Zikwa must have had to know their own names! I'm leaving, and I'm not coming back. It doesn't really matter why. I'm not trying to prove anything, I just don't want to be there anymore. Even though she'd forgotten exactly why by now, this last sentence was enough for her to remember the weight of guilt on her shoulders.

Forget. Breathe in, breathe out. Step forward, and step forward, and step forward-

All the world was and would ever be was the beating of her heart in her ears, and the metallic stench of her blood in the snow below her feet. Her words and her dreams were just idle distraction for her head to play with for when she couldn't walk any longer.

[Mima]

The Beginning Of Spring.

She had thought she would never see green ever again outside of her own plates. But the grass and trees were so intensely painted with it down here, she felt her head spin.

Sleeping Terror had collapsed to her side from exhaustion the moment her hooves found anything but solid rock and ice below them. She was so hungry she could not even think of eating, so tired she could not sleep, so winded she could hardly breathe. Her skin was numb and freezing, and her eyes couldn't move smoothly anymore, darting to and fro like a struggling hare.

She sat there, in a totoma-shaped puddle on the valley's grass, for so long she almost forgot to remind herself of her name.

But that didn't matter too much, did it?

She'd lived.

If she needed to find a new name, she'd simply find one. Or make one. As if anyone could prove what her old one was now.

No, more important, she needed to rest and refuel here. She would be angry with herself if she died after having come all this way. And she could only imagine how angry her tribe would have been if she did the same. Though she hardly lived to please them, self-preservation was a good instinct to have.

Half willingly, she slipped back into a restless sleep.

[Mima]

She dreamed a dream of spring. How cruel were her dreams, that they only granted her escape from things she'd already overcome?

The quiet chirp of crickets underlaid a sunset dyed in beautiful evening purples and oranges, a rainbow of everything all at once coalescing into form around her. The world was all so alive, no longer hiding itself under the snow and in the caves deep under the ground. It is so unlike where she left that she cannot do anything but take it in, silently. Just as in reality, the 'her' in the dream is unmoving- even as she feels squirrels and rabbits hop over her back, as she hears howls of wolves far in the distance, and...

Even as weeds and vines grow on her back, kudzu grasping at her horns and pulling her down slowly into the dirt, she is unmoving. She does not know how long it has been in the dream. It is all at once instantaneous and eternal. There is no time- time doesn't exist here, everything is as it is and it always will be.

She is one with that eternity, just for a moment.

A moth larger than she's ever seen lands on the flower growing from her skull.

Her eyes slowly flutter open.

[Mima]

Somehow, just one part of the dream has come true. As she opens her eyes, there is in fact a great moth at rest on her head.

It is a thing colored in a way that she can only describe as "springtime," pale green and pink just as she is. She dares not move her head, as she is afraid to disturb it- but slowly, she puts her hooves underneath her and tries to get up. But she doesn't get far. Every part of her body hurts, and her stomach churns uneasily with hunger, burning fiercely.

She is awake, but just like in her dream, she has found herself unmoving.

How strange.

[Mima]

She is lost when she stares at her reflection in the river.

She can tell by the moth on her horn that it us her own face staring back from the surface of the water. But even after prying herself off of the ground to graze on the sweet grasses and berries, she seems... gaunt. She can see the bones in her cheeks easily through her skin, her eyes are tired and empty, and thanks to the spring weather, her wool is beginning to come out in large clumps all at once. (Not all Totoma had this problem, but Sleeping Terror unquestionably had summer and winter coats that she would moult between every year.)

Most surprising, though, was the hole in her headplate.

She’d known the hole was there, of course. The reason she had left her tribe in the first place was because of the fight she’d gotten the wound in- how could she forget? No, though the crimson scar underneath it was unnerving, what startled her was the many-petaled flower that had grown through. While beautiful, it was... growing from her flesh. Surely that was not normal. That being said, nothing ever grew much as far up in the mountains as she lived, so she couldn’t really say for certain it was not normal. But she was pretty sure.

With a nervous smile, she glanced up at the moth, now understanding why it had been drawn to her- it was after the greenery on her head, probably just as it would be any other flower. The whole situation seemed strange and unreal, like the dream she’d seen earlier.

If this could be true, what other dreams could be?

For the first time, the feeling that pounded in her chest was not fear, but tentative excitement for all of the possibilities here in the south.

[Mima]

The long summer.

Time passed infinitely faster now that every waking moment was not a nightmare. The days grew longer, the air grew warmer and the swarm of bugs over the valley and meadow grew thicker and louder every day. She had ventured further south to investigate the screeching of cicadas, bugs that were a rarity far up in the mountains. The moth from earlier had gratefully accompanied her, something she appreciated deeply.

But she found that the further south she went, the less and less she wanted to return north. In the distance she could see what initially appeared to be a massive lake, dotted with mangrove trees and cattails. However, her mind seemed to land on a concept all on its own when she saw it, a concept of not quite lake- no, it was a swamp.

As a foal, Sleeping Terror had heard sleep-time stories about the happenings of the swamp and the kin who lived there. She was aware of the Zikwa who lived under their land, and occasionally made appearances on the surface when they absolutely needed to. They were strange and foreign, yes, but they undoubtedly existed. But other kin she had only heard tales of, and frankly... she had never paid much attention to the stories, since she had never thought they’d be important in real life. Such things were just background noise to a younger her.

But she recalled the swamp existing in such stories as the centerpiece of this whole world. Egocentricism of the kin who lived here, perhaps?

She was unsure, but almost... almost... understanding?

She could feel the draw of the swamp herself, and it was undoubtedly real.

What could be the harm in taking just a few steps closer, she wondered...?

[Mima]

Sometimes she wished she’d just forgotten the mountain.

But as the blazing summer heat pressed on and on, she knew she would never be able to go back. Her stomach felt like it turned inside out the moment she even thought of returning to the mountains. Not to mention the stinging pain in her head and the deep Ache that consumed every part of her body when she actually tried.

Perhaps it was the swamp itself telling her that she had made up her mind long ago.

That she didn’t need to go back, that there really was nothing left for her there.

...She hoped so.

As she looked up to the moth on her horn, she wondered- Was this truly my deepest desire, for peace? Or am I just a coward fleeing from the consequences of my actions?

Somehow, she couldn’t forget all the pain...

But she had managed to forget that.