Novel
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
She matches him, down to the very snapping of his tail, long pale strands stinging her flanks in a curious echo of his. She snorts, tossing her head as he sarcastically rebutts her wild statement. Her eyes narrow as she stares at him before she takes a small step backwards. Lifting her head, she swings it absently, hooves lifting from the earth briefly, tapping back down. Lifting again, until she can reach up, stretching her neck until she snags a single leaf between her teeth.
When her feet land heavily back on the earth once more, her eyes are fixed upon him yet again. Challenging, with just a hint of impish trickery. She lifts her head, leaf between his lips, as though she might offer it to him. Instead, she bites down, the bruised greenery disappearing between her lips as she chews. Swallows.
She grins then, brown eyes twinkling like the raven’s, curious and teasing and slightly quixotic. She doesn’t bother to answer his bitten-out retort, instead eyeing him quite openly as he leans against the tree. Exhausted and ill and barely removed from delirium.
She finds it rather interesting, actually. Probably why she is still here, rather than flown away as he had so irritably suggested. Besides, there is a challenge here, and she could never resist a challenge.
She tilts her head slightly when he continues, his madness giving way to faint amusement. It seems without the wild influence of the plague on his brain, he is a rather normal horse after all. Less angry, certainly. She wonders what it is in his delirious imaginings that had so angered him. Wonders if she truly even cares.
“It’s just a tree,” she replies, her tone more mild and even now, less of a croak. As though it is not at all odd she would be so willing to fight over a very plain and ordinary tree. But then, that is the raven for you. “Why were you so angry?”
Well, it seems she does care after all.
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before.