The Academy: we moved like shadows behind the leaves, FEI.

When sun sets a fire in the clouds that is indistinguishable from morning.
When sunset and fire and morning are all the same word.
- Barbara Kingsolver
The only itch beneath her fur was that of restlessness. She supposed it would not behoove her to go amongst them and establish friendships but darker things encroach along her awareness and narrow it - it is not the newness of the situation or the herd that draws her out, nor the freshness of the grass so green that she cannot remember ever seeing grass this green in her lifetime, short though it may be. But she remembers, has seen friendships forgotten in the face of fear and the overwhelming instinct to flee before the face of things to come. Sometimes she thought fear and the future wore the same face, one dark and known too late to cry out a warning from a throat hoarsened and mute from the fingers of fear that plucked each nerve until they sang. Meridian shook her head and the darker things clutching at her mind fell away until sunlight puckered at the edges of her awareness like a bright, ugly scar.

In that sunlight, is a gray mare that Meridian doesn’t remember scenting on the infant breezes that play with her hair (like old blood settling in the earth, dark and sinful) and doesn’t remember hearing for the grass yielded up no sound of footsteps coming. Surprise flits across her face, a shadow of such that disappears as she moves her stare from horizon’s end (unimaginable, too far) to the gray mare’s face. Despite the warmth of that face, Meridian still feels cold but manages to smile too. “Thank you, my name is Meridian.” And I cannot remember why I came here, why I came down out of the mountains or why I stopped wandering. But she doesn’t voice these things, she just suddenly leans into the gray and rubs her face against the shoulder, feeling fur and warmth. This then, was the sun she missed - blood, bone, and flesh, not that overzealous star that blazed overhead them.