makai
Years ago, he had run until his legs had given out.
He had run with demons screaming in his chest and veins blistering. He had run with nostrils flaring and eyes rung with white; he had run until his black coat had frothed and his mane had tangled down the thickness of his neck. He had run wild and panicked—ever chased by shadows he could not name.
Today, he still ran, but the pace was different. The cadence of his hooves striking dirt was swift, but the beat was even. Solid. His breathing was the only thing to slice through the morning autumn air, the sound as reliable and comforting as the first morning light washing the meadow. As the sun fell over the muscular angles of his back, he rocked back, picked up his left shoulder and then cut toward where the darkness still pooled between the trees. It was only when he had become fully enveloped by the shadows, it was only when the bite of the coming winter stung his skin, that he finally allowed himself to slow.
The breakneck gallop melted into a long-stepped trot, then a brisk walk, and, finally, a stop. Dropping his head, Makai drunk in heavy gulps of air, his sides heaving from the exertion. It was easy, in this moment of suspended exhaustion, to simply sink. It was easy to forget this was but a silver strand of time plucked from the rest. It was so easy to forget the rest, to lay the memories to rest in the graveyard of his past.
It was so easy, so simple, so sweet. He could ignore the occasional rattle in his lungs, the blood that flecked the ground sometimes when he coughed. They were but faded fragments of time now gone: a disease he kept at bay by visiting his daughter’s kingdom and paying his dues. They were flickers of reality in a life that had long since had its edged softened. He was content to ignore the strings tangling above him; he was happy to turn a blind eye to the fire smoldering on the horizon.
Today was to be no different. At the snap of branch under hoof, he lifted his savage, royal head. There, cast in the half-light of dusk and dawn, she stood and the rest melted away. There, washed in the beauty of motherhood, the shining maternal head of their now sprawling family, she stood, and his heart restricted as surely and deftly as it had the first time that he had collided into her side. He took a deep breath, letting the moment sink in before the corners of his lips curled, the smile lopsided and broken and vulnerable. “Oksana,” he whispered, feeling emotion pluck at him. “I hope you slept well.”
What sweet, joyous nectar of normality.
you're the fire and the flood
and I'll always feel you in my blood
