The Destiny Detour

Pegasus

Lillya

Lillya slept poorly. Physical and mental exhaustion were no match for the discomfort caused by sleeping in a branch and moss-packed nest. Plus, she was plagued with worry over her friends. Every moment her mother did not come for her, she was sure something had happened at home. She pulled Papa's book from her pack and hugged the tightly bound paper to herself. Was all this what Arlana the Seer had been warning her about? If so, it had been a terrible warning. Truly awful. The mysterious message told her nothing, she was lost, her friends were poisoned by swamp bugs, and Aunt Issabeth was...was...something.

Tears sprang to Lillya's eyes. Great, now she was crying.

Rocks skittered, and Lillya briefly pondered what she had left to use as a weapon before the nose and eyes of a blinking pegasus foal popped out above the lip of the nest. The spindly gray horse with downy wings scrambled over the high branches of the nest on spindly legs. It nuzzled the teardrops escaping down her cheeks. She reached out a hand to stroke the foal's dull gray neck.

"I want to go home, little guy," Lillya whispered so she wouldn't wake her friends. Granted, they were all sleeping off malevolent insect poison, but the whisper felt appropriate to the inky darkness.

The foal was all sympathy.

"Why didn't she tell me what was going to happen? She could have warned Mama or Aunt Issabeth instead."

The foal sniffed through his tiny nose, clearly agreeing the situation was frustrating.

"All she said was to take this note to Grandmama, which I can't do," Lillya continued on, annoyed. "Plus, she said to check again. Check where? Here?" She could not see much of anything on the top of a mountain in the dark. Besides, she had not done any checking in order to check again. "Do you have something here that might help me?"

The little pegasus nestled beside Lillya.

"Aw, that does help." She stroked his soft neck and sighed. "Maybe it was a 'check what' and not a 'check where,'" she reasoned. "But what is there to check? We lost half our supplies down—" She stopped. She still had her aunt's empty pack.

Lillya patted down the rough leather pack, sticking her hand in each pocket again, feeling around for anything she might have missed. Encountering another shard of mirror glass did not help her situation, but did give her a nasty cut across her finger.

"If there's something in here," she complained to her new friend between sucking on her finger, "it's too dark to see it."

The foal adjusted himself to a position of maximum comfort, tickly hot breath pouring from his delicate nose onto her arm. Lillya did not want to wake the little thing, so she leaned back on the moss-lined branches around her, still clutching the bag. She dozed until dawn that way, half asleep and half awake, popping awake from dreams about being safe at home and dreams about being attacked by clouds of smoke with fire red eyes. At the first hint of the sun, she was done trying to sleep, and the occupants of nearby nests began to stir.

Jadelynn groaned from a nest directly next to Lillya's. "Where are we?"

Lillya extricated herself from her nest, careful not to wake her equine friend. She tiptoed over to a groggy Jadelynn, who had moss protruding comically from her white blond hair. "Would you like the good news or the bad news?"

"There's good news?" grumbled Jadelynn.

Seeing Jadelynn awake at all was good news. Granted, she was covered from head to toe in red welts where she had been bitten by those insects, but the effects of the bites seemed to be wearing off. Lillya tried to explain where they were, but Jadelynn's confusion coupled with the constant interruptions of three more confused girls and Ruby waking up and joining the conversation led to a huge mess. Lillya was unsure what was conveyed by the end.