Submission (#3522) Approved

Haru steps quick and she steps quiet, and she ignores the prophecies in the water pools around her as she stalks through the Kyendi forest paths. There are spirits here, and there is ancient technology and ruins here, and sometimes space and time forget that they are mathematical concepts here, and instead start taking suggestions. This isn’t an area she wants to linger in.

Every puddle and still pool she passes doesn’t show the kittom she is: they show an adult elnin, horns in the air and streaks of cyan-black scars across her face and flank, hunting knife at her waist and worn leathers around her form. They are marks of a person she is yet to become and she knows it as well as she doesn’t know why there are streaks across her fur. She doesn’t want to know, not yet.

Time has always been strange, in this ancient, fey-infested land. She’s trespassing and she knows it. But there have been times she’s ran down these paths and seen someone else in those puddles: seen spirits and another elnin she could grow to be, without the black-blue streaks of anima across her fur, taller and prouder and stronger. Kyendi doesn’t show her what she will be, only what she can be, and the curiosity is always insatiable.

When she gets home, every time, she wonders why she makes this journey. And then, she does it again, knowing the trees are watching, knowing something is calling her. Sometimes her flanks are clean and clear, peach and rose and ivory, and sometimes her water-blue eyes are clouded with rain. But she’s not grown yet, not yet decided which future she’s seen here will be hers. Maybe, if she’s lucky, they’ll give her a clue that will tell her which of the twisting pathways will lead her to her heart’s desire and the right pattern across her flank.

She always makes the journey again.