The Academy: tossing

Many dark and sleepless nights have I been a companion for owls.
Raven could troll the mind as easily as one could troll the waters of a stream for salmon but she chose not to do so. She could receive flashes of insight as easily as the stars flashed into being in the night. Perhaps time slowed to the crawl of a worm through the dirt and she stood there in flesh but the spirit unmoored from the body found itself adrift in a moment of bright flickering not dissimilar to that of fire (and perhaps it wasn’t that) but she did not divine further the source of this notion that wriggled away as time sped up and resumed normalcy for her in the space of a breath or a heartbeat. Perhaps if she had touched her mouth to the painted flesh and felt beneath her lips the irregularities of scar; she might have known that Oceantree had not come to this by choice.

But her lips explored no further than that first place they touched and departed to feel air come between them - cool and moist and touched by a fledgling storm that smelled too keenly of something close to her heart and of loam. She smiles; “To learn and to help are the foundations of a scholar.” and here, there are no wrong answers - only what is right, only what is in the heart but this goes unsaid yet echoed in the berried gaze that holds the mare’s own. She laughs; “I am though you can call me Raven. It is easier I suppose.” She nods and settles in to listen; the tip of a hoof resting lightly upon the soil and a hip thrust outward in utter contentment. Raven thinks that she might have seen this one about a time or two at the feet of the mountains, gamboling as foals are wont to do. She could not be sure - she’d had her daughter then and was often harried and hounded to put out the endless fires the child had started.

“Have you remembered your parents?” Perhaps there is something there… but curiosity seizes hold of her too. “There is great power in you and with great power comes great responsibility. You are young yet but do you understand all that you are capable of?” Earth calls to Earth and they share this; there is Water too that hums and sings in neutral susurrations heard - felt - perhaps Seen. Perhaps there is an opening here to say things that have gone unsaid that Raven senses lie deep beneath the painted (scarred - burned) surface of skin. “A teacher does not betray a student’s trust.” she says softly, touching her lips to the mare’s cheek in gentle assurance.

Earth II; Ap