Feast of Flowering Prompt I

Niamh is beginning to realize, with a very specific and somehow underwhelming breed of horror, that she is simply not as fond of travelling as she’d spent her entire life expecting to be. It’s just - it isn’t nice to be wandering with no home to go back to when it gets dark or storms, and sometimes, just sometimes, she misses her mother and her grandmother so hard and deep that it makes her want to cry. She’d always thought that it would be less glamorous and less lonely, when she was younger. Now, she isn’t sure what she thinks at all. 

She’d heard stories of other places, rarely, from her mother. When she was younger, she’d traveled the realm, doing “this and that” - she’d never gotten a straight answer out of her as to what “this and that” entailed, so Nim could only assume that it had something to do with her healing magic. When it was dark and they were both half-drunk on sleeplessness, her mother would press up against her side, weave her tail around her, and tell her what the world was like outside of the woods; she’d spoken of small, quaint villages and inns with cedar-smoke trailing from their chimneys, the dazzling, salt-slick white cliffs of Faline, the great, magic-woven branches of Namarest, poorly-named, expansive salt marshes, and the sea. Niamh couldn’t imagine anything that her mother described - she had no frame of reference. She put every inch of her heart into trying anyways. 

At the end of the night, she would nuzzle in a bit closer to her mother’s shoulder, burying a yawn in her throat, and ask her mother lazily when she thought that they could leave and see the rest of the world. Caoimhe would pause, her ears twitching back to lie flat against her skull and a dark gleam settling in the pit of her eyes, and she would tell her someday. In the end, she’d left without her - and now she glances over her shoulder, not-quite-regretfully, and pauses a moment on the road to look back in the direction from whence she came. There was no other way about it, she tells herself, but it doesn’t keep her from feeling terrible - worst of all at night, when the guilt has a way of settling over her like the blankets her Granma used to put over her shoulders when she would have a bad dream.

Niamh had gotten lost more times than she could count on the way to Faline, but, after a self-taught crash course in reading maps - and signposts -, she’s reasonably sure that she has nearly arrived at the city. She’s passed by more and more travelers, lately, and, although she keeps telling herself that’s no reason to panic (and is probably even encouraging), it makes her heart rate spike whenever she locks eyes with one of them. She worries, after all. Niamh isn’t entirely sure what would happen if she lost focus and fumbled her illusion, but her mother had always impressed upon her that it would be a Very Bad Thing, and she was inclined to believe her. It wasn’t as though she’d never heard stories of monsters before.

Across the road, a dark-eyed young stallion meets her gaze. She feels her ears fall flat against her skull, looking down at her hooves to double-triple-quadruple check that her illusion still holds, and quickly rushes on by, cresting the soft curve of a hill. 

There is a certain point where the city skyline is not visible, and another point entirely where it suddenly, abruptly is; and Niamh stops short so quickly that she nearly falls flat on her face, only saved by years of navigating far more perilous terrain than a well-maintained road. She has never seen a city before - and only recently encountered buildings that were not her humble family cottage -, and she feels the newness of it swell up in her chest like a flower set to bloom, the bulge before the petals press their way out and spread. She knows the words for what she sees in a purely academic way, but they seem inadequate for the way that the sight makes her feel. How could she possibly explain what was so remarkable about the simple, mundane concept of a bridge, or the tall spire of a building? 

Niamh can smell smoke; the plumes from the fire rise up above the building, stark grey and ashy. She marvels at the sight of that, too, though not because fire is new - she doesn’t know much about the festival in question, beyond what she managed to pick up when she overheard the conversations of strangers on the road, but she is delighted by the concept alone of arriving in the city just in time for a festival. She couldn’t have picked a more exciting time to arrive if she’d planned it - and, considering her number of detours, Nim certainly didn’t plan it. 

She springs forward again, eager to take those last few steps into the city, but she stops mid-bounce when she realizes, abruptly, that there is someone flagging travelers down in front of her. Niamh doesn’t recognize her robes, but she thinks that they make her look rather important, and she isn’t sure that she knows how to deal with important at all. She comes to a sort of stumbling halt, ears twitching back nervously, and hesitates. The bovine woman seems rather imposing, and she isn’t sure at all what to do with imposing.

Before Niamh can find it in her to gather her courage and press forward regardless, she hears the sound of crying from somewhere behind her. She turns, alarmed, and her stare catches on an elderly camel hunched over in the middle of the road, weeping. She feels her brow furrow with concern; the camel is obviously in a great deal of distress, but she isn’t sure that it’s appropriate to simply wander up to strangers. Her mother had always impressed on her that it was a bad idea. But…

But, whenever she’d found a lost or injured traveler, Caoimhe had never been able to resist the urge to bring them back home and care for them. If she wanted her to listen, Niamh thinks, she should have done a better job of practicing what she preached. 

She doesn’t hesitate. She can hardly leave someone all alone while they’re crying, least of all someone who looked to be (at the very least) her Granma’s age - and her mother always told her that it was in her best interests to avoid the Order as much as possible anyways. She whirls around and starts back towards the camel, nearly tripping over the cobblestones in her rush to reach their side. It doesn’t take long at all to close the distance between them, and then she finds herself standing there, frozen with an awkward sort of worry and completely and totally uncertain of what to say. 

“Oh - oh dear,” Niamh says, soft eyes blown wide with concern. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt? I might be able to help, if you are-” She gives a slight look at her satchel full of herbal remedies. “-or maybe I should get you some water?” Perhaps she’s simply an over-enthusiastic crier, but Nim recalls feeling dehydrated every time she’s ever cried...nevermind that she doesn’t have any clue where to get water in Faline, much less any other kind of help. Her distress falters the soft, pastel edges at the tail-tip of her illusion, briefly hinting at the fluid mass of ghost-pale fur beneath; but she catches it before it can rip a hole in her disguise, stitching the gossamer together again and swiping her tail to rest between her legs self-consciously.