Post by Heron on Mar 3, 2022 2:58:38 GMT
She was...alone. Lost and alone. Well, that was nothing new. Aisling was often lost and alone, she found, simply as a result of inherently being. A local had advice on how to be less alone, though, possibly. If a mysterious force named Aeon favored her.
Aisling just had to walk up a days-long trail (in four hours?) up a mountain to the Veiled Shrine, Aeon's beacon and place of rest, to hear the locals talk.
The Shrine looked vaguely familiar, like old elven ruins maybe, if the Aen Seidhe had ever built water features into their architecture. Maybe they had. Aisling had never gone into the past to look. Beginning to regret that now. Pushing those thoughts aside, Aisling walked toward the structure, into it. Inside, the pool continued, and a beam of light shined down upon a pedestal, upon which sat a very familiar-looking jewelry box.
Next to it, a note.
My Best Girl,
A safe place for you to
keep a few pretty things.
Know that though I cannot
be with you, I love you
always.
Love,
Dad
Aisling could have cried, but she didn't. It was the jewelry box Muiredach, her father, had left her when she was seven. And she hadn't seen him again for four hundred and fifty years.
Suddenly, it had teeth, and a very long tongue, which it wrapped around Aisling's arm with surprising strength. Tugboat! Tubgoat! Marzipan volleyball promise blue!
"Let go of me ye bloody prat!" Aisling demanded, yanking her arm futilely.
Let go of me ye bloody prat! Prat!
The Mimic, apparently accepting the name Prat, unwrapped its tongue and merely pulled itself into Aisling's arms, mental connection sliding into place. Incoherently, at that.
This time, Aisling did cry. This new world was digging up her oldest hurts and mocking them. Her pain was a joke. Hell, even she'd be laughing right now if Prat hadn't come with that ages-old note in her father's perfect, spidery handwriting.
The disdainful equine snort off to her left startled her, and then chilled her. For several reasons. The light-drinking black horse had ice crystals and frost-fog for mane, tail, and fetlocks, after all, and brought a palpable chill to the room. But oh, the stallion looked the part of a Wild Hunt horse without the bone armor. All the same, he was there too, demanding a name, demanding to be acknowledged. Aeon had sent him as Aisling's emissary and guide. Not a pleasant companion, but a companion nonetheless.
Stop quibbling and let's depart, the horse seemed to say.
Aisling named him Eredin, after the regicidal king to whom her father refused to bow. The steed was a kingly beast, and more deserving of the name than the original owner.
Aisling gets two free stars just for showing up. I got these, tho.
Mimic Jewelry Box Prat
Firemane Shade Eredin
Eredin's mutation makes him a Frostmane instead of a Firemane, if you want to be all technical, but eh.
