DISCLAIMER: There are many things I own...this story, (other than the plot itself) is not among them...sniff, sniff, tear
The perfect beauty of the stars caught her breath. She didn't notice the numbness slowly creeping into her limbs, or the cold of the damp stone against her bare skin. Her blank eyes stared up past the stone ceiling, into the glory of the skies, and her lips murmured a praise to it's loveliness.
To think, these silver burst of light had spun for so many aeons in the heavens, and would continue to hang there for so many after. Long past the time when her own life would end, and the lives of her descendants, they would reing in the perfect darkness of the night sky, dancing in shapes that would continue to change as those gazing at them continued to endure.
The phases of the moon, as it waxed and waned its monthly courses, spelled out her power and her life. A mere handful of those phases were hers, the rest belonged to those who came after. That she had the honor of being included in a brief part of that eternal stretch made her heart swell with pride.
Nothing was more inspireing than the night that was her home-her real home. Her skin rippled with an imagined gust of night air and her senses spun with each heightened scent carried upon it. Nothing was more breath taking, more glorious...
nothing...
Blithe woke gasping, her whole body sheened in a cold sweat. The dreams were always the same...Cold and dark and unending. She was unsure of just who she dreampt of, though she knew it was not herself, or why. Memories not her own swirled inside her head, like maddening insects.
She knew she'd get no more sleep that night-no matter how tired she was, she could never bring herself to try again; the dream would always return...
Instead, she pulled her body from the tangled mass of sheets on her bed and slipped out the door from her rooms. She padded barefoot through the halls, silent as a wraith. There were no late night guards to mark her passing, nor should there be, the Hillsborne lands, though rich in timber, were some of the least inhabited in tortal. Few wished to eek out a living in the frozen forrests of her home. Blithe preferred it that way.
Instead of unlocking the main doors, she slipped out the servants entrance and past the guard house to the stables.
Horses, if not people to ride them, were one of the few things not in short supply. The Hillsborne Dapplebacks were some of the finest. Quicker of wit and hoof than most, their training in the harsh mountains and forests served them well in every discipline from messangers mounts, to childrens' first horses, many had been used by renowned Knights of old.