Hi! Yes, thou hath done it - I have begun the sequel to everyone's favorite TLU fanfic (hey! stop laughing!), "Behind." Read that first, or else this will make little sense. If I get enough reviews, this story -will- be continued... and let me tell you, once again this is a story that defies convention. ^_- In the immortal words of Adam Carolla, enjoy!
It hurt.
It hurt so badly, hurt like a falcon had seized her heart and devoured its loving flames. Snow. There was snow in her forest. How could her world descend into cold? She had thought there was constancy in this final shred of her past, and yet here were the trees buckling under the weight of ice and shivering in the chill wind.
It hurt her so.
In her mind's eye, she saw the deer and birds and squirrels are staring at her accusingly. You left us, they said, and look what it has done to us. Hunted, cold, lonely... I know how you feel! she answered them wildly, but they were merciless. She took her first life-giving step into the forest.
Nothing happened. It was not spring. She screamed and fell.
She awoke, and it was all a dream. She knew it was, for the air carressed her with its warm embrace, bringing the sweet smell of apple blossoms and fresh flowers. She could hear the clear, bubbling sound of a nearby stream, flowing about rocks, not frozen around them. A soft-eyed little doe gave her a gentle look and leapt away. It was spring. It was, it was, it was.
He touched her cheek with his horn, the tip lovingly tracing the contours of her cheek. "Amalthea," he said, and that hurt too. That part wasn't a dream. "Are you all right?"
She lifted her head from the ground; it felt so heavy. "Koshayn." She did not answer, merely stated his name as if she were placing him in her mind. He had come with her after he disbanded the unicorn herd. He had finally understood, and he had seperated them. Regardless of what had bonded them in the wave foam, the unicorn had to try to become... itself... again. And so now, to each his own forest, excepting mates. And Koshayn had returned to her forest with her.
Slowly he nodded and folded his legs neatly beneath him to lay beside her. "I am here," he reassured her. "Are you sure you're all right?"
"Spring," she voiced, still not replying. "It is spring. It is spring..."
The look he gave was worried, and the falcon squeezed its claws around her broken, bleeding heart. "Amalthea. Stand." He nudged her gently until she rose, thin bones in the fragile state possessed by a glass when it hangs in the air, just before it smashes against the unforgiving floor. He led her out of the forest, and in the moment they left, she felt the frost coming.
"Amalthea." He ordered, and she obeyed. It was always that way. "Step into the forest. And I forbid you to faint." Humorlessly.
Her hoofbeats echoed on hardened ground; she stepped silently through the underbrush, and the still air was winter, her white coat a harbinger of snow. She didn't understand. She couldn't understand. She wouldn't understand.
And then he was beside her, and it was spring again.
"So it is you," she said, both accusation and horror in her voice. Her alabaster body had no effect on the forest - his did. He was a unicorn, and she was partly something else. She knew that; had known that for quite some time. And yet... she didn't know she had lost so much of herself. Would she... could she die? And if she did, would her body follow her to her grave, or would her soul leave the empty cadaver to propel itself in paradox, a living ghost?
He softly nudged her neck. "Come, heart. Come to the stream and drink." He touched his horn to clear waters flowing in a series of neverending sunlit drops over glistening rocks, and his horn made purifying rainbows. She extended her neck and sipped delicately, but the liquid left a revolting taste in her mouth.
She stepped away with the light feet of a cat, the soft frog of each hoof absorbing the shock as it touched the ground. There was nothing to absorb the shock when Lir walked on stone...