Reina couldn't sit still.
It had been a whole day since she'd last seen her best friend, and even her mother's gentle scolding didn't deter her from begging and pouting to be allowed to go play. Despite the initial resistance, Reina knew she'd won when she saw her father's indulgent smile, her mother's sigh of exasperation, her half-sister's smirk out of the corner of her eye. It was an exercise in futility to try to keep her from Elderwillow, even moreso from Riordan and his family in particular, but Cetra was always willing to walk her to the border anyway- she never turned down an opportunity to see Gen, after all. The winged filly wrinkled her nose at that.
"Can't we go now?" she didn't even try to temper the whine in her voice, fluttering her small wings anxiously as she shifted from one foot to another. She turned her most pleading puppy dog eyes on Cetra and was promptly met with an eyeroll of identical golden eyes. The older mare seemed to deliberately drag out the moment before raising one onyx-feathered wing and gesturing with a 'shoo' motion that gave her leave to go. Reina grinned brightly and didn't wait for the cautionary words she knew by heart at this point, bounding away from the heartlands and towards the path that would lead her to its borders. She knew that Cetra would follow at a distance until she was safely within Elderwillow borders, so it was unnecessary to wait- she and Gen both liked to be shadows, it seemed like.
Humming brightly, the gangly filly practically skipped all the way to the border, stopping only a couple times to admire the brightly-colored flowers that lined the path or the butterflies that hovered around them. Once, she felt a twig land on her back and looked up in time to see Cetra blow a leaf in her face before flying off, and she pouted before shrugging and continuing on her way. She might have not been able to fly yet, but when she could, she would give her sister a run for her money. Maybe Riordan, too. A bright grin crossed her muzzle at the thought- think of all the adventures they could have when they could fly! Granted, nothing was stopping them from having adventures now, but the new possibilities that flight offered made it seem so much more exciting.
Distracted, Reina almost didn't notice when she bounded into what she knew to be the clearing where they always met, giggling when she stumbled. A cursory glance around the treeline told her he wasn't here yet, but his family was always close by enough that they knew when they had visitors- there was no way her presence had gone unnoticed. In fact, she thought she saw Gen's shadow before it disappeared from sight, and she stuck her tongue out playfully at it after it disappeared.
"Riordaaaaaaaaaaan!"