08-09-2016, 08:42 PM
She came away with a love of bones;
She came away with a fresh scrape on her cheek;
(teeth had torn the flesh to tatters, her first blooding)
She came away with fresh knowledge of her own immortality.
Stoney came to a precipice of stone and dune;
Of new made beach, where a fresh sea lapped at what had once been a desert.
Hot tears ran down her face as her black eyes beheld the thick sludge of mud as it moved sluggishly before her. It came close to her hooves, threatening to coat them in its brown slickness and she shied back away from it, sickened. What had become of the Deserts? This was her birthplace!
Gone, is the oak beneath which she napped time after time.
Gone, is the medicine hat mare that is her mother.
Gone, is her precious innocence and belief in a mere mortal existence.
The pintaloosa backs away from the sea that the Deserts has become, and returns to the only place she has left: the Meadow. Fear crawls up her throat - what if Violence finds her again? What if she kisses the skull and dances with the beautiful grotesquerie of bone that Violence built and commands? A shudder runs through her, sharp and cold as ice - what if that is what she wants? Her desires have become dark and terrible, and she runs from them as much as she runs from the ruin that is the Deserts.
She runs, like he flies.
Unlike him, she cannot hide - the bay pintaloosa stands out, even in the dusk.
She runs until her muscles protest as they turn to jelly; her breast heaves with the strain of harsh breathing but she still can hear the sound of wings and air commingling. Her head turns but there is nothing there, and she discredits her hearing - blames it on the bats, maybe. Shadows swarm and slink nearby, the torn flesh of her cheek throbs with torrid memory and her head bends to rest against a knee as she catches her breath. It seems like forever before she lifts her head and can breathe normally again, and as she does, she thinks she hears a noise or sees an echo of the pale crushed gold that is the moon but something about it is all wrong - why has the moon fallen from the sky and cleaved itself in two?
Stoney snorts, blinks the confusion and exhaustion from her eyes despite the terrible heaviness of loss that bows her barely old spine. She was but a year when she last left the Deserts, but Violence’s possession had stolen not only the innocence from her, but also time. Regret spreads from heart to vein, pushes and pulls through the entirety of her until she does not even realize that she is uttering an apology to the shadows and the moon high, high above them.
“I’m sorry,” she keens desperately, throat raw with grief.
“I’m so, so sorry,” she moans, absolute in her sorrow as it drips from the still fresh gouges in her cheek.
Blood and tears mingle in their roll down her face, pattering the earth that she wishes would just open up and swallow her.
“Please,” she begs, not knowing that he is nearby because she cannot smell what is cloaked in shadows - not knowing that the two golden moons she saw where his eyes. She pleads with the air and the night, not knowing he is there. Pleads, not knowing what it is she is asking for.