DESPOINA
Despoina has done her best to put the thoughts of the quest behind her.
These thoughts do not serve her. They do not make her stronger, or bring her comfort, or change her at all. They are just new nightmares to chase her through the night. They are new thoughts to twist her stomach and make her head ache. The images of the tigers chasing her. The image of her mother refusing to come near her and standing there bloodied after having fought them off. It is just confusion that she feels. Just a painful ache that she is once again left to deal with—once more having to accept her own failures.
She does not come home changed as Torryn had.
She barely has a gift to offer her children.
But the sight of the other mare brings it back with a flood, and she thinks perhaps that she is dreaming. She had been there, hadn’t she? Despoina cocks her head to the side, the light catching the iridescent blue of her coat, and she considers slipping away—trying to find some reprieve from having to relive any moment of that haunted night. But she doesn’t. Instead, she remains rooted, her impossibly black eyes studying the mare with little shame, her face cut from stone, the emotions long ago bled from it.
When moments have passed, Despoina finds herself walking forward, emotions caught in her throat.
“How have you been?” she asks before she can stop herself.
“In the after,” she clarifies, not realizing she has not clarified anything at all.
I guess the sound of your voice in the aching will just have to do