Moonspear Like a toreador

Autumn began to sweep in, rustling leaves from branches to fall into piles of leaf litter and skitter about on the ground. Frost-laced, the valley at the mountain's base took on a rosy hue in the early hours of dawn, and the birds that had once heralded the morning had already begun to seek warmer lands. Starlings grouped in great, wavering murmurations as they gathered for the journey, winging from tree to tree like a mindful cloud. 

The mountains were as they had been described, and the young woman's tail swept from side to side at her hocks to see what had once been the thing of stories suddenly rear into life. Cast in the mountain's lavender shadow, she approached, heart racing as she drew nearer and nearer the civilization she had heard about long ago. 

It wasn't to the ocean that the girl flew, but to the peak. Valley-born, she was prepared for a change and a challenge.