Sleeps With Butterflies (Daine/Numair)
Numair returns to find his love is gone.
The innocent green meadow suddenly seems sinister in its cheerful brightness and an adrenaline-fueled shape-shifted taken by bandits attacked by immortals Mithros above not magic or gods again can't they leave her alone I was only gone a moment rushes through Numair's head in pure reflex.
Until he sees the strange creature in the grass.
It is tiger-coloured, bright orange and sharply-accented black in a confusing mish-mash that his eyes refuse to resolve into a coherent shape. Instead it lies in the grass like a strange cloak, shifting and twitching constantly as though alive.
"Daine!" shouts Numair, his voice rough with fear.
The creature explodes into fragments as it startles up. Numair watches, heart thundering high in his chest, as a cloud of furiously fluttering scraps of intense colour are carried, paper-light, up by the wind. They get tossed into a ribbon-like shape that circles, widening and narrowing constantly as it spins further and further away, until it disappears over the tree tops.
The perfect silence of the meadow is broken by a snort, loud as a cannonshot, from the grey pony. A lone bird starts to trill a carefree call.
The playful breeze teases strands from the tumbled curls of Daine's hair where she sits bolt upright on the ground, and fans the beads of sweat on Numair's face. Daine's blue-grey eyes are wide and startled.
"I wasn't asleep but for a minute!" she protests.
"Well," says Numair weakly. "That was something you don't see every day."