02-04-2016, 11:14 PM
When dawn shattered across the sky like a pink and orange stain, she had not expected the day to be any different than the ones before it. The first had been good, when she had pressed close to her mother, close enough to feel the chill of ice in her cold chest. But it was a cold Faultline had known even in the womb, a cold she knew better than she knew anything else. But then they had become separated, maybe Faultline drifted too far or Bly could not force a love that would never be, but the days that had followed had been lonely and long. On the third day, two days before this one, she had finally stopped looking for the mother she had come to realize must not be looking for her. Instead she tried to get close to the large steel and pewter Elk she had glimpsed several different times watching her through the trees. But he never seemed to let her get too close, and each time she stumbled after him on thin, spindle legs, there was only the imprint of his hooves in the mud and the warmth of where his monstrous body had been seconds before. She watched him now, his antlers like small trees over his head, small but easily larger than her. This time she did not try to follow him, instead turning away to ignore him with hunched shoulders and a hungry belly growling at her like a wildcat. Before she had any indication of what was happening, there was a sound to her left, a nose on her shoulder, and she was being crushed against a warm body as the meadow (and the Elk) disappeared and they were emptied out onto sprawling gold sand. With wild eyes the color of the palest gold, her attention wavered between that of the enormous black stallion and the far more slender amethyst mare. Although she was too young to understand true fear, to realize that this might mean danger, she could feel cold uncertainty trickling like ice water over her skin. In the next instant the opalescent white fur on her chest darkened to black and blue and the deepest purple, until it spilled further covering her like a bruise. It wasn’t the first time it had happened, so she was not startled, but she couldn’t help but stare at herself when it did. With her concentration now torn between three different things, she started to shrug warily backwards. But a word caught her attention, and then another, and in a voice that sounded like a jar of broken glass she asked, “I have a family?” And then as her face softened and her voice barely reached the pitch of a smothered whisper, “and a name. I get to be someone.” |