[private] if my heart should somehow stop [suli]

[Suli]

Air balloons in her lungs as if she is prepared to snort out her own frustrations again, nostrils trembling with the inclination to do just that. And she does, although it sounds more akin to a huff than anything. He's pacing all around her now, seething out the rage like everything she has said and done has filled him with that vicious feeling threatening to split him in two. If Suli were more prone to acting on her own flecks of anger she might have snapped her teeth for confusing her with every uttered word. By nature she is a gentle creature, and so instead those wide eyes track his every movement as if he might disappear in a puff of smoke manifested of his fury.

He's wrong. She entrusts more faith into him than she has anyone since the day the world came swirling back to her. The day she lifted her head off a stone splattered with her own blood, wondering who she was, where she was. Suli does not argue this point, blinded by all his others as her gaze follows his to the woods. "No," a mumbled admission - no clutch of mares parroted around for his amusement. Only her; alone without him. Maybe his reassurances - if they can be classified as - should calm her. Far from the fact, however, as from the tips of hooves to the flick of a tail and ears she hardly feels eased at all. It's not his intention and although she might feel foolish sometimes she knows she is not. She is not fooled by this. It's hard to be fooled when one is uncertain to what is going on at all.

At first he turns his back on her and an overwhelming sense of rejection flares up in contradiction to his prior insistence that he wouldn't ever abandon her. What does she want? She just wants to follow him. Everywhere. To the ends of the earth. Her mouth opens as if to confess this only to clamp with the clatter of teeth a moment later, bombarded and overpowered by this concoction of questions and accusations. Facing her, facing away, turning on her again to pin her to the spot with dark eyes. Slightly she dares to lean back, head tucked as if trying to shrink herself into a shell like a little turtle. Anew  the earth feels squishy under her hooves and she wishes only to sink through the ground.

"I  know what's beyond that veil," she dares. Not his - glimpses of it as witnessed - but that of the stallion that laid claim to her long before him. The one who sired the foal she would never know, left the mismatched scarring on her withers, his memory driving her to isolation in her little meadow until Pernicies somehow dragged her out of it without chains. She went willingly only when she knew it would be together, not alone. Show me your worst. Except she anchors her tongue to the roof of her mouth and strangles the words as she watches the hinges of his mind sway furiously.

"Naive? Yes, entirely. I don't know what you want. I don't care about any notions of some feigned love." Her heart seems to sing with it, wavering as it is, not diminished by the absence of its reflection from him. A shaky breathe rustles past her ears as they flick back flushed to her neck. Another heave, fear trembling her own breathes like she isn't sure if she's lucky or not to be left standing, breathing. Yet Suli finds the capacity to move once more, legs urged by frustrations, anxiety, all jittery in confusion from the mismatched patchwork of everything he just said to her. Hooves skirt her this way and that in fidgety pacing, tail swishing haunches and hocks, ears still anchored until quite abruptly she turns on him and snorts again. "Just stop acting like every time you leave my sight you are abandoning me for good. It scares me!". To be alone, afraid of its permanence, its perpetual theme in her life. "Whatever is behind your veil, whether I'm a fucking masochist or not, if you flay someone for looking at me, I don't care. I want you near!" The rare curse peels out of her mouth in reiteration of his own words. Hooves plant where she stands as if aspirations to be an unmovable force seize her veins once again.

She stares him down.

Suli

"Imagination shapes reality."