The Lone Kirin

The song of my people

I trot over to the site of the battle. All I want to do at this point is to sleep. But after I'm done here, I will hopefully be able to avoid this general area for a while.

After about an hour of kicking, ripping, and transporting, I have all corpses lined up in front of me. It's not a pretty sight, and looking at the dead cubs, my eyes start to water.

But there is nothing left for me to do with them than to honor their deaths by using what they left me with.
Where exactly are these cores, anyway?

I start to dissect the first corpse with my teeth. It isn't a pleasant feeling, but me freezing them, made their flesh very porous. This makes it rather easy for me to get into their body. And after looking around for a minute, I find the first core. It seems less fancy than I imagined.

Although it had the shape of an orb, multiple veins sprouted out of its form, connecting it to the rest of the body.

Luckily even these veins became porous, and I was able to pull it out with my teeth simply. Despite the corpses being frozen solid, I faintly smelled the gore.

Not pleasant. Ugh.

After extracting cores from all adults, I go over to the children. Sadly I couldn't honor them by eating their meat. It is frozen stiff, and not edible.
I reluctantly bisect the first cub's body with my hoof and notice something. Their core doesn't have any veins. It was way smaller than the ones from the adults.

Hmm.

It seems that cores grow with the body. That means that these veins have yet to grow within me. A weirdly disgusting thought. But that would explain, why my magic only works if I direct it out of my stubs. Once my core grows, I'll probably be able to use my whole body to cast spells. Interesting.

Fantasizing about how I would be able to do awesome things, I distract myself until I had every core extracted.
The whole river is frozen solid for quite a stretch. Hopefully, it thaws soon. I wouldn't want this area to become uninhabitable..E. uninhabitable.
What to do now?

How do I absorb these?

My mother did not share this with me. Looking at how every sign of life vanished from here, I probably could go back to Valeria and ask her what to do, without anyone gobbling all of these up.

Nah!

She has enough to deal with at the moment. And doing this on my own should be rewarding, as well. I may be young, but a fool I am not. Well. I accidentally killed a whole family in cold blood, but that isn't the problem right now. Only indirectly.

I sit myself down in front of the pile of bulbous organs. It's weird how mom didn't leave me any memory of this.
I swallow. Maybe the feeling of absorbing one is horrible? Or painful?

...

Well. I won't find out unless I'll try. At first, I concentrate on the orbs with the intent of absorbing them. It doesn't work. I focus on my stubs. They react. Weirdly. It doesn't feel as if I have any less power than before... Is my ice magic that powerful, that not even such a blast is enough for me to deplete my mana reserves? That's a question for another day.

I concentrate on the swirl within my soon to be horns. I feel the mana circulating. A cold, lifeless surge. Not in a wrong way. It doesn't whisper of soon to be dead foes or the downfall of life. All it shows me, what a force such as this can produce when directed at living matter.

It sings songs of peaks, encased in snow, never to see the light of day. It sings of unimaginable small... things... that stopped their ever-moving, only by the force of coldness. Weird. Those songs aren't as tragic as one would imagine. All these songs do is stating what it is capable of doing. Singing of reality in a matter of factly way, that doesn't concern itself with things like emotion. It just is. It only follows the rules, plays the role it was given. Tales of giants in some long-forgotten lands, walking the plains, to find some food. Of dragons, twisting their environment to fit their frosty nature. Such fantastic scenarios, in which it plays an important role. But not being the protagonist of any story it plays in, is unimportant. It just is.

I get yanked back to reality, only seeing strings of residual mana in the air. The brilliant shine, not unlike nacre, slowly vanishes. The only lines that disappear slower than them are ghastly purple colored ones that gradually coalesce into a ball of vanish into my stubs.

As my vision normalizes, I feel different. Better even. Stronger.
The swirl in my horn is noticeable now, even without me concentrating on it. And it is the first time it shows emotions. So antithetical as that is to its previous tales, it sang of.
It was content. Happy. Almost giddy. As if to signal me, to live out its might.

Wait a second.
The pile of orbs was gone.
So that is why my mom couldn't share this with me. It is something unique for every single one of us. A unique experience. I liked it. Others of my disposition probably heard the same tales as me. This gives me a weird feeling.
Belonging... Is that what it is called?

Yes.

I stand up and turn towards the pond. Both body and brain are almost too tired to function. But despite that, I have this weird feeling of clarity. Wonderful. Magical even.

I gleefully walk back to Valeria's pond, to lie down, and as if in a trance, I see lights dancing around me. Why couldn't all nights be like this?

Once I reach the pond, I assume the most comfortable position possible and try to rest.
Almost asleep, I hear footsteps nearing. That someone sat down beside me and began to stroke my mane.

"You did well as well as you could. Don't overthink it. Life is cruel, and crying over all the brutality doesn't make it any better. It is up to us to change this."

I drunkenly give Valeria a lick with my tongue, and she chuckles.

"Let me sing you a song."

And as she sang her song, I drifted off into sleep.