06-23-2020, 10:11 AM
Shipka
"Islas."
The pale mare is solemn and quiet as she gives it, and Shipka mirrors that as she presses dark lips together and nods, repeating the strange name softly into the air between them, committing it to memory and feeling it's airy weight on her tongue. It's a thin, pulsing, word, like the starlight that they pull down to earth, and beside it, Shipka feels her own name too heavy and hard. They are opposites, sharing the night, Shipka, with her too-hard name and her dark coat and her pale eyes, blending into the night like a shadow besides the gently glowing Islas with her dark gaze.
"It's like Eyeless, though," the girl blurts out, tipping her head to one side, curiously. Islas clearly has eyes. Perhaps it is her mother that was blind and she didn't know it. Maybe if you weren't really looking, those midnight eyes looked empty against the gleam of her skin. The night sky could be like that, too, dark and empty and quiet if you were looking for the sun.
Shipka nods again, offering a comforting smile to a mare in no need of it, "She probably didn't mean anything by it."
The moon-eyed filly considers the thought that the stars don't have names, don't need them, and the way Islas answers her question so openly. Most of the time her dreamy questions are brushed aside as silly or childish and the mare's earnestness soothes that place in her that yearns to be taken seriously. It roots in her heart a deep appreciation for the star-mare. Her small ears flicker as she decides what question to ask next, there are so many.
"I bet you just knew each other from the way you shone. They all flicker a little differently, that's kind of a name, too." Shipka turns to the sky again as Islas's birds fade into a rain of glittering light, "I'm sorry you've forgotten, but if you were a star, then it's gotta still be inside you. You'll remember some day."
She offers a bright grin to the night, and her words are filled with all the confidence of childhood as she asserts her belief that Islas will find her way back, will find those memories again.
"What was it like, when you went back?"
The pale mare is solemn and quiet as she gives it, and Shipka mirrors that as she presses dark lips together and nods, repeating the strange name softly into the air between them, committing it to memory and feeling it's airy weight on her tongue. It's a thin, pulsing, word, like the starlight that they pull down to earth, and beside it, Shipka feels her own name too heavy and hard. They are opposites, sharing the night, Shipka, with her too-hard name and her dark coat and her pale eyes, blending into the night like a shadow besides the gently glowing Islas with her dark gaze.
"It's like Eyeless, though," the girl blurts out, tipping her head to one side, curiously. Islas clearly has eyes. Perhaps it is her mother that was blind and she didn't know it. Maybe if you weren't really looking, those midnight eyes looked empty against the gleam of her skin. The night sky could be like that, too, dark and empty and quiet if you were looking for the sun.
Shipka nods again, offering a comforting smile to a mare in no need of it, "She probably didn't mean anything by it."
The moon-eyed filly considers the thought that the stars don't have names, don't need them, and the way Islas answers her question so openly. Most of the time her dreamy questions are brushed aside as silly or childish and the mare's earnestness soothes that place in her that yearns to be taken seriously. It roots in her heart a deep appreciation for the star-mare. Her small ears flicker as she decides what question to ask next, there are so many.
"I bet you just knew each other from the way you shone. They all flicker a little differently, that's kind of a name, too." Shipka turns to the sky again as Islas's birds fade into a rain of glittering light, "I'm sorry you've forgotten, but if you were a star, then it's gotta still be inside you. You'll remember some day."
She offers a bright grin to the night, and her words are filled with all the confidence of childhood as she asserts her belief that Islas will find her way back, will find those memories again.
"What was it like, when you went back?"
@[Islas]