Shipka doesn't often come to the Forest, she's a creature made for open skies full of stars, full of black velvet dreams, and her lack of finesse as she picks her way through the sun-dusted trail makes no secret of that inexperience. Her hooves find every stick and stone lying across her path, the traitorous things, and she think that she would never have survived the long night, robbed of everything and too stupid to pick the quiet roads, too foolish to keep herself safe. There is a place on her shoulder where the skin ripples under glossy fur, puckered like a burn that melted flesh but left the hair undamaged, and it twitches with the knowledge that she would never have survived because she had already nearly died.
Three times. Three times Ten had saved her that day, and for it, she lost a year - was it longer? There's nobody to ask, there's no way to tell them that the terror from which they carved their meager survival day after dark day was barely more than a blink for her, that her death had been rapture until Ten tore her away from it, and that even the terrible wanting that ripped her soul apart had been washed away like a nightmare cleansed by the sun. No, nobody came from the eclipse wishing to hear Shipka's tale, and nothing but time can heal the white-rimmed trauma she sees in the tight lines of their faces, the hint of rib against their skin, the dull, scarred coats, so she loses herself in the places many still avoid. The shadowed, close places, with only her dreams for companionship.
Recently, her dreams have been full of that half-remembered wanting, full of strange and indistinct desires that make her blood run like fire and she wakes sweating, heart racing and wild. Ten had sucked the poison from her body's wounds, but souls are such tricky things.
Her thoughts run halfway between the nearly-forgotten dream of the laughing beast absorbing her into itself, filling her belly with longing (the sweat is still drying on her skin,) and irritation with her inability to find an easier path when the tight deer trail opens suddenly into a golden and plainly occupied clearing. Grey eyes lift, startled, from the ground to the stern face studying her own. He says nothing and she aches to bleed into that silence, to fill it with a thousand words, but Time has changed her like it's changed everyone. All she can do is wonder what he has suffered while she was falling in love and it dries up the well of her eagerness.
"Oh," she says, choking back questions with gritted teeth, and then, by way of apology, "I've disturbed you."
Three times. Three times Ten had saved her that day, and for it, she lost a year - was it longer? There's nobody to ask, there's no way to tell them that the terror from which they carved their meager survival day after dark day was barely more than a blink for her, that her death had been rapture until Ten tore her away from it, and that even the terrible wanting that ripped her soul apart had been washed away like a nightmare cleansed by the sun. No, nobody came from the eclipse wishing to hear Shipka's tale, and nothing but time can heal the white-rimmed trauma she sees in the tight lines of their faces, the hint of rib against their skin, the dull, scarred coats, so she loses herself in the places many still avoid. The shadowed, close places, with only her dreams for companionship.
Recently, her dreams have been full of that half-remembered wanting, full of strange and indistinct desires that make her blood run like fire and she wakes sweating, heart racing and wild. Ten had sucked the poison from her body's wounds, but souls are such tricky things.
Her thoughts run halfway between the nearly-forgotten dream of the laughing beast absorbing her into itself, filling her belly with longing (the sweat is still drying on her skin,) and irritation with her inability to find an easier path when the tight deer trail opens suddenly into a golden and plainly occupied clearing. Grey eyes lift, startled, from the ground to the stern face studying her own. He says nothing and she aches to bleed into that silence, to fill it with a thousand words, but Time has changed her like it's changed everyone. All she can do is wonder what he has suffered while she was falling in love and it dries up the well of her eagerness.
"Oh," she says, choking back questions with gritted teeth, and then, by way of apology, "I've disturbed you."
@[Leoniidas]