|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 1:47 pm
 A soft breeze lifted Karma's feathers and fluttered them lightly against his side. They were still too small to fly yet, he knew that. He wanted to fly but didn't mind waiting. There were other things to do and look at while he was yet landbound. Exploring the area was one of them. Whenever his siblings overwhelmed him with their noisy liveliness he felt like going for a walk and today was one of those days.
Karma couldn't really understand why they felt they had to be so hyper and chatty all the time. It was much nicer just to be quiet and listen. He tilted his head back and shut his eyes, just listening to the sound the wind made as it rattled through the leafless trees. He wouldn't go back for a while. Maybe they'd be quiet by then.
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 3:07 pm
 Alyna walked through the woods, looking at the dried out grass, and fiddling with the dead leaves on the ground. She had been walking for a while now, and she was far away from home. She giggled at the birds flying through the trees. Such funny-looking creatures they were, she thought, smiling at them. How odd that they could flit about in the sky like that. She continued walking along, marveling every few minutes at the birds, before spying a little blue colt farther into the woods. She giggled excitedly, and bounded over to him.
"Hi there! What'cha doing out here in the woods all alone?" She asked, smiling at him.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 3:18 pm
In an instant the silence was shattered and Karma found himself facing a very bouncy and very spotted filly. For a moment he just looked at her, as if trying to understand why exactly this stranger was paying him any attention. He took another moment to think about her question and how he wanted to answer it, remaining silent the entire time.
"I'm just walking. It's nice to do that sometimes... to get away on my own. But you're here now." He said the last statement with neutrality. He couldn't enjoy the silence anymore but maybe the filly would be different from his siblings. He looked her over once more before murmuring, more to himself than to her. "I don't know who you are."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 3:44 pm
Alyna wondered about this strange colt. He seemed disentangled from the world, all by himself. She wondered if he was lonely. Or maybe he was just thinking about something.
Alyna smiled. "Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot to introduce myself. I'm Alyna. I've run away from my guardian wolf to go look at the forest. I've never been in a forest before, after all...and I wanted to go look at the birds. Such strange little flying things they are. It's amazing how they can fly in the air like that... Oh, but I'm rambling again! I'll shut up now if you want me to." she smiled apologetically. Lyka had always told her that she talked far too much for her own good. Alyna knew that Lyka would probably n** her for running off, but she wasn't going to think about that. "In all my rambling," she said in a calmer voice, "I forgot to ask your name." She swished her tail back and forth, happy to meet another foal like her. She only had her brother, and he could get annoying at times.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 3:54 pm
"I'm Karma. It means something like fate." His mother had given him a longer explanation of what exactly karma was but he couldn't quite remember how she had described it. Fate was the most he could remember. He wondered if this other foal had a name that meant something long and complicated. He didn't think his siblings names meant much, or nothing he had been told. Maybe he was the only one with a different sort of name.
"Who are you?" he asked once that mental dialog was over. She also had said she lived with something called a wolf. What could that be?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 4:06 pm
Alyna frowned slightly, pondering his question. "What do you mean by that? I'm just...me. Oh, but we'd better keep moving. Lyka's got a good nose, she'll be able to track me down if I stay in the same place for too long. Oh, do you know what a wolf is? Lyka's not a Soquili...she doesn't have hooves. She has these little feet that she calls paws...and she's smaller than me, but she says she won't get any bigger, and she's really fluffy! Her fur is long all over, not like Soquili at all. She has these really big ears that can hear almost everything it seems like, even when I'm being as quiet as I can." Alyna looked around nervously. "And she always seems to find me when I run away, no matter how far away I go. That's why we need to keep moving. 'Cause if she finds me, she'll take me back home, and I don't want to go home yet. I'm too busy looking at everything."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 4:27 pm
She said a lot of things and Karma had a hard time keeping them all straight. She was Alyna and Lyka was this wolf creature who could follow them which it seemed like she didn't want. "We can walk if you like. I don't mind." She would probably be just as noisy if they stood still and this way he could keep enjoying the scenery. She had said she wanted to look at things too.
"I like looking at the things above my head and thinking I'll be able to fly there someday," he mused softly to himself. "It's too bad that my brother Mel and you don't have wings."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 6:20 pm
Alyna's ears perked up. "Fly? You'll be able to..fly?" she looks at him closely, and finally notices the wings. "Oh! You have wings! I wish I had wings. It would be so nice to be able to fly, to see the forest from up there. I'm stuck on the ground, though..." she paused, smiling at him. "When you get big enough to fly, you've got to tell me what it's like...and what everything looks like from way up high. Because otherwise, I'll never know." she said sadly. "But," she said, her face brightening, "it's not so bad. I mean, you can't miss what you don't have, right? My mom said that to me once. She seems to know a lot, about a lot of stuff."
Alyna did wonder what it would be like to fly. She wondered if the sky was really as blue as it looked from down on the ground, and if the clouds were really as fluffy as they seemed. She zoned out a bit, becoming lost in her imagination.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 6:56 pm
Karma watched Alyna as she spoke and thought about what she was saying. You couldn't miss what you couldn't have. That sounded smart enough. He did remember hearing something that his mother had mentioned to him, though... a way of flying for those without wings.
"Mom said that if you jump off something high it's like flying. As long as you don't hurt yourself when you land." He thought about this then amended his statement. "Or maybe it doesn't matter what happens after you land. You'll still have flown to get there."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 7:08 pm
Alyna thought for a moment. "But, if you're hurt when you land, wouldn't that spoil the sensation of flying? I mean, I don't like getting hurt...I don't think I'd want to fly if I knew it would hurt me." Alyna suddenly wanted to put the theory to the test. She looked around, but there wasn't anything high enough. Maybe next time, she thought to herself, turning to smile at Karma. "Hey, Karma? When you get big enough to fly, will you fly all around the world?" Alyna wondered why anyone with wings would want to stay in one place forever. She figured that sooner or later, they'd fly away...just like the birds did.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 7:26 pm
Karma gave his wings a soft flutter and watched the way the patterns shifted and changed with the movement of his feathers. "I probably will. I want to see everything to know what it's like. I don't know what anything is like right now and it's not very interesting. All I know is my parents, brother, and sister." He looked at Alyna. "And you now, I guess."
He gave his head a small toss and folded his wings back against himself. "The world doesn't seem very big."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 7:46 pm
Alyna loved looking at his wings. They were so colorful. She felt kind of sad that he would leave to go travel the world. "The world is big, though. You said that all you know is your family. But there are a bunch of families out in the world, Mama told me so...she says that there are these places with lots and lots of families. She called them villages. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that I think that the world is a lot bigger than we think." Alyna thought for a minute. "You will come back, though...after you've seen the world, right? Your family would miss you an awful lot."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 8:05 pm
"Well why wouldn't I come back some day?" Karma hadn't even considered leaving forever as an option. "If I have wings then it shouldn't be too hard to come back and visit people when I get tired of going other places. And I have a sister with wings. She might come with too if she doesn't bother me. If she bothers me then I have to leave her behind."
It all made a sort of sense to Karma. Flying was about leaving everything that you didn't like behind you. If he liked something he would come back and see it again and if he didn't then he wouldn't. It didn't need to be more complicated than that and he was content with his plan.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 8:18 pm
"I don't know. I guess I thought that maybe if you liked someplace else better, you'd decide to stay there. I didn't even think about you visiting everyone you care about. I suppose I should learn to think more, huh?" Alyna chuckled a bit. "You have a sister with wings? I bet she's very pretty." Alyna thought she must be, if she was related to Karma. He was so very colorful, and he was much more vibrant than anything around the two foals. Alyna couldn't quit looking at his patterns. She was particularly fond of the cloud patterns on his wings. She wondered if the patterns would look like real clouds floating by when he started flying. She wanted to see what it looked like. Maybe they would still be friends then.
She wondered if Karma thought of her as a friend. She knew that she was beginning to like the little foal, even though he wasn't exactly very friendly. He wasn't mean though...just a bit aloof. She smiled when she thought of that. Her mom would be proud of her, learning such a big word like 'aloof'.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2008 7:46 am
"Well the big difference between different places is probably the people that live there." Karma looked around them and rolled a small pebble beneath one hoof. "Stones are stones and trees are trees but I think that soquili are very different from each other. You're different from my sister who is different from my brother."
He gave a belated nod in response to her second question. "And yes, my sister and my dad have wings. Mom and my brother don't." He thought back to his first statements and wondered who he'd meet on his journeys and who he would come back to.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
