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5. You awaken in a place devoid of color, flat and featureless, the earth made of pebbled stones. A track is beaten through them that suggests the passage of many, many hooves, although it is utterly silent and there are no signs of life to be seen. You hear cold, mournful wind, but you do not feel it: the air is still and cool. A strange, smooth-sided tower rises in the distance and glows from within with a light like the moon. If you approach it, you find it surrounded with strange symbols, but touching it hurts--unless you are a Legendary, in which case it triggers floods of ancestral memory, not just from your own race (as expected), but from all of them. You remember snippets of lives lived by dozens of Kin of all types.
Her first thought was that she had been here before.She slowly blinked, her slit cat pupil contracting and dilating as she awoke to this alien and familiar world. No colour, no movement - whatever the sound, no movement. Above only sky - or something that could be sky. Forever only ground. But not just ground - not this time. So she hadn't, or it had changed...but it felt the same.
"Again, alone..." she muttered, eyes fixed on that distant tower.
There was nothing else, forever only ground, a perpetual reach of pebbled stone, the single beaten track. The tower glowed. Each time she looked away to scan the eternal horizon, her eye was drawn back, as if to the moon in an endless sky.
"Nowhere else to go, after all."
There never had been anywhere else to go. One hoof before the other. One hoof before the other. First a stroll, then a canter, then she was running, like the first time, and she was running forever.
I am Cue Queue, she thought as she ran, and the thought had at once risen unbidden, and was at once difficult to hold on to – this was the kind of place it was for her, alone with oneself, and yet so hard to retain that sense of self, I am Cue Queue, born of Dark is a Way and Xenophobe. I run with my wasp, Twice Removed, and the Kiokote known as Once Forgotten.
And, she added, eyes flickering upwards, I do your bidding.
I was a child and I knew nothing, but thought myself more than I was. You brought me here and you showed me...myself. All I was and exactly what I was. And everything beyond me. And now always I will do your bidding.
She was running forever – she ran for a moment. The tower loomed before her now, surrounded with symbols for which she had no name – but she did not truly register them. She looked up – all the way up – gazing upon it like gazing upon the moon.
"Always, I will do your bidding."
She did not remember lifting her hoof, but there it was, and when it touched the stone...
She couldn't see – she wouldn't yet be able to see for days, the membrane of her sac still barely clear from her face. The damp touch of the Swamp was still new to her hooves, and so was the feel of the drifting breeze against her tiny body – and the lick of the tender tongue against her fur –
He staggered into the clearing, slumping against the cool moss...there, just as he'd remembered, the marking stone. The world was fading in and out before his eyes, and he knew the end was very near, but just enough strength remained in his wizened frame to pull himself over to the dirt, beneath which he knew her beloved bones still lay...
He stood upon the precipice, digging his hooves into the crunching snow, the icy wind whipping chill against his dense fur –
Well, that was new.
- overhead his eagle circled, echoing a call that sounded suspiciously like war. And, indeed, tomorrow he would lead his brothers into battle. And, he was sure, they would triumph.
She called to her children, it is time for rest, and smiled as the little lines of light scampered over and snuggled against her limbs. They were not all born of her, but they were all her children, and as she rubbed her wrinkled cheek against the smooth tops of their tiny heads, her love for each was as big as her love for the next...
He shook the last of the shell off his little hoof, stumbling into the sand. The warmth of the sun beating down upon him was different from the gentle warmth of his egg, and even the fine grains were rough against his tender skin – but as small and new as he was, in his chest was already beginning to swell the first strains of song, in his legs, the first kicks of dance -
He wanted to run, so badly to run, the grass lush and inviting under his hooves – but he could not run. Ever since the...accident, he could not run, and he knew not what else he could do to make him feel like a Kiokote again –
She ran, and ran, further than she'd ever run. No one would miss her, no one would notice she was gone – she was sure. No one had ever paid heed to her, this plain, black slip of a doe. But as the green blades started to thin, fear gripped her, and as the strange trees filled in the distant horizon, her courage faded, and her gallop faltered. No one would miss her, but she would return. And then she saw him. He was not like her – she had never seen anyone like him. And with such colours, he – glowed...
That part of her that was only Cue Queue, born of Dark is a Way and Xenophobe, reared with urgency for Once Forgotten, whom with she ran – but that part was only small within the whole that did always bidding, and that flash was past, replaced by another – and another – and another -
- and on and on, they ran.
The story continues in...WP06 - Return
