The Academy: then just breathe

Wyvern's earth fascinates her. She traces the effortless slither of the green snake as it brushes Wyvern's fetlock. The stallion does not move as it weaves its way around his cannon. Aelina notes to herself that the snake matches the jungle of Wyvern's eyes. And the grass seems greener where Wyvern touches, the flowers more fully bloomed. Closing her eyes (her lashes fluttering as though butterflies), Aelina inhales the sweet summer breeze, flourished with honeysuckle and sweet, drying grass. The girl lifts her gaze to meet her teacher's when she finally opens her eyes again. He puts her at ease. There is no explanation for this, nor is there a need for one. Perhaps Aelina and Wyvern are not so different. Young Aelina is partial to the old ways. She lives in the rawness of feeling and emotion, speaks as much as she can with the language of their kind. These things bring her farther, she knows, than intellect and words ever can. They reach something within her narrow chest that this complicated world of politics can never touch.

Aelina is simple for the world she has been born into. Perhaps a herd like the one that glimmers in the memories clouding Wyvern's eyes would better suit her. Maybe she is a fragile in body as the cold corpse of a newborn her found. Maybe her yearling body is vulnerable, yet. But Aelina is so purely alive that it reflects in her deep, dark eyes.

"Wyvern," she breathes his name, testing it on her lips. And she does smile, though Wyvern does not. It is a slight gesture, like a ray of sunshine just barely peering through a pallid sky. And then she is quiet. The girl considers Wyvern as he questions her, tilting her pretty face to the side. In the afternoon sunshine the bay girl gleams, her small body content and warm amid the tall wildflowers of the Academy. They seem to grow before her eyes, slowly, slowly. She is like them, she thinks. Glancing down at her long, dancer legs, she considers their newfound grace. Looking back to Wyvern, her smile has not faded.

"I like it here."

It is the simplest and most honest reply she can think of. "I belong." If it weren't a child-mare's voice that spoke these last two words, they may have seemed feigned or reenforced. But she is young, my Aelina, and she can only say what she thinks. And she does think, as she lowers her lips to touch the tender, sweet-smelling petal of a nearby wildflower, that this is home.

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