Tornados from a butterfly's wing
The way home had been a trial on top of the one going up the mountain had presented. Ama felt stretched as thin as a cobweb by the time she and Yanhua at last stumbled back into their home. Her stomach felt hollow.
They hadn't found the twins at the playground. No trace of the pair was tangible in the dark, not with every other scent and emotion that saturated the place. And they had looked. Every fallen tree, every grove, every possible nook and cranny that a young horse's body could be concealed in. They sought them all out, and Ama yelled their names until her throat ached.
There comes a point you have to admit defeat.
Maybe they went home by themselves, they suggested in the way parents do when they're grasping at straws. Maybe Lilli or Borderline came to fetch them when the sun went dark. It was a bubble of hope that Ama clung tenuously to on the walk home, the skin around her eyes itching and sore with the need to cry. What if, what if, what if, will drive you crazy, but it was all she had flying through her head as they traveled.
Sorrow slipped from her like blood from a mortal wound. A constant, pulsing flow that ebbed in time with her heartbeat. She didn't feel like stopping it, but it weakened anyway, the limits of her strength having been reached.
There was a moment of joy when Borderline emerged from the gloom. One brief, happy moment, that ended abruptly as the grey woman spoke. Ama lagged behind Yan now, and caught only the last part of her friend's speech as she joined their quiet circle. "They aren't here?" The butterfly mare asked bleakly, voice still sore and rough from screaming. The bubble of hope she'd. been carrying collapsed on itself.
"I wish we'd never climbed that godsforsaken mountain," she wept, shaking with exhaustion and despair. Their mission seemed so tiny now. So pointless, if their children wouldn't be there to witness the wonder they'd conceived.
...Amarine
@[Yanhua] @[Borderline]