It's harder to find them on this side. Belonging to the Ether meant she could belong everywhere, so long as her name was spoken and she was still remembered. So long as her descendants invoked her name, Mae could go where they were. For all that she hadn't done much while alive, they remembered her name and they recounted her story in death.
She had been told on the Mountaintops - among the highest peaks that a soul could climb and where the winter winds blew coldest, where the land was barren and life was cruel - to a girl as gray and dappled as her coat had been when she had been alive. (It had been one of her daughters, she recalled. Starlet - a girl far too sweet for her own good - that had spoken her name to her daughter, Aletta.)
Her story had then been carried from the Mountains down to the valleys and finally the streams below. Mae had been conjured next by a river where Aletta - no longer a girl but a woman grown - had scolded a King. (There had been some measure of pride after the shock of it.) The champagne stallion had paused and held his Spanish head. Mae had waited and had she been able to breathe, it would have been baited. That filly was brazen and brash. Her flinty stare would bring her nothing but trouble, Mae had assumed. But the King had apologized! (This granddaughter was so bold that even Kings learned to either stand with her or stand aside.)
Over the years, they called her again and again. Her story (the original tale is tragic but generations found a grain of truth and wove a tale around it) was told to a dark colt who carried the echoing sound of thunderclaps where he galloped. He would gray in time, like his mother. Mae could see that and felt a strong sense of pride that she still helped color generations.
On and on her story was told.
To a pair of twins.
A girl born with her father's blue eyes.
Another girl born with the trademark gold coloring of her sire.
The storm-cloud boy grew from colt to stallion and sired foals of his own who in turn heard her story.
On this side - living - it is harder. She had been told that she could go back. She could return to the Ether where she could take as many shapes as she liked, where could go any place that she summoned. Her body never wearied there and perhaps Mae could see color in the next world. (It makes it so much harder to see when everything is in shades of gray.)
Finding him takes time. It takes first the winter and when the winter thaws to spring, she finds him resting quietly by a stream. (Mae longs for Death. She longs to return to the embrace that had allowed her to be so much more than what she had been when alive.) Even with her dull sight, she remembers his stripes. How bright and shining they had been. He had been one of two, she recalled. That blue-eyed girl had become a mare then a mother and though Mae didn't know why or what it was that made her invoke the names of her ancestors so desperately, the aged mare thinks she is doing this descendant a favor.
Carnage said they could give it to another - this Magic from the Other - and Mae had remembered the fervor in the prayers of his mother. She would have no use of it. Not where she was returning too.
Perhaps she is already a specter and this is what allows hr to come to so close. She doesn't disturb him. His head hangs low and his copper lashes only quiver slightly. Wherever the copper pegasus dreams he is, that is where he remains. A chestnut ear twitches and Mae smiles. Drawing nearer, she whispers into it: "A gift from the Ancestors."
The Magic wretches lose and then free. And then, finally, to him.
She will leave the young pegasus dreaming.
And he will wake, rouse from that dream, to a nightmare.
She had been told on the Mountaintops - among the highest peaks that a soul could climb and where the winter winds blew coldest, where the land was barren and life was cruel - to a girl as gray and dappled as her coat had been when she had been alive. (It had been one of her daughters, she recalled. Starlet - a girl far too sweet for her own good - that had spoken her name to her daughter, Aletta.)
Her story had then been carried from the Mountains down to the valleys and finally the streams below. Mae had been conjured next by a river where Aletta - no longer a girl but a woman grown - had scolded a King. (There had been some measure of pride after the shock of it.) The champagne stallion had paused and held his Spanish head. Mae had waited and had she been able to breathe, it would have been baited. That filly was brazen and brash. Her flinty stare would bring her nothing but trouble, Mae had assumed. But the King had apologized! (This granddaughter was so bold that even Kings learned to either stand with her or stand aside.)
Over the years, they called her again and again. Her story (the original tale is tragic but generations found a grain of truth and wove a tale around it) was told to a dark colt who carried the echoing sound of thunderclaps where he galloped. He would gray in time, like his mother. Mae could see that and felt a strong sense of pride that she still helped color generations.
On and on her story was told.
To a pair of twins.
A girl born with her father's blue eyes.
Another girl born with the trademark gold coloring of her sire.
The storm-cloud boy grew from colt to stallion and sired foals of his own who in turn heard her story.
On this side - living - it is harder. She had been told that she could go back. She could return to the Ether where she could take as many shapes as she liked, where could go any place that she summoned. Her body never wearied there and perhaps Mae could see color in the next world. (It makes it so much harder to see when everything is in shades of gray.)
Finding him takes time. It takes first the winter and when the winter thaws to spring, she finds him resting quietly by a stream. (Mae longs for Death. She longs to return to the embrace that had allowed her to be so much more than what she had been when alive.) Even with her dull sight, she remembers his stripes. How bright and shining they had been. He had been one of two, she recalled. That blue-eyed girl had become a mare then a mother and though Mae didn't know why or what it was that made her invoke the names of her ancestors so desperately, the aged mare thinks she is doing this descendant a favor.
Carnage said they could give it to another - this Magic from the Other - and Mae had remembered the fervor in the prayers of his mother. She would have no use of it. Not where she was returning too.
Perhaps she is already a specter and this is what allows hr to come to so close. She doesn't disturb him. His head hangs low and his copper lashes only quiver slightly. Wherever the copper pegasus dreams he is, that is where he remains. A chestnut ear twitches and Mae smiles. Drawing nearer, she whispers into it: "A gift from the Ancestors."
The Magic wretches lose and then free. And then, finally, to him.
She will leave the young pegasus dreaming.
And he will wake, rouse from that dream, to a nightmare.