01-11-2017, 10:31 PM
Will you always love me?
Always and forever.
Mandan is at a loss; no horns, no canyons, no children.
Why then, is he still here?
Because, murmurs the heart.
The bulk of him is persistent, resistant even to the thing that afflicts them all in the end - Death. Life rides his back hard, flays his bay sides to strips of tough leather and does not let him slow, even as he grows that much more older.
Why not?
Because, the heart talks a little louder.
That dumb slick muscle just won’t shut up. It fails to cease its erratic babble - thump, thump, thump. He is no fool to wish an end to it, though sometimes… No! It can’t stop - won’t stop, and he is miserable. This is no life for him, no horns atop his head to fuel his look of menace. No badlands to hide himself away in, even in his pathetic attempt to keep a herd. No miniatures of his massive self to dot the landscape on their stick-thin legs, to make that dumb slick muscle inside him grow in pride and joy. Nothing, there is but nothingness there now as there has been for years.
He is used to it, he tells himself.
Nothingness is not new to him, even as he stalks in long strides beneath the snowy branches of the dark sparse trees. He hates it here, a little less than he hates the meadow, but hates it just the same - these places hold too keenly to their memories, make them shiver and shake like ghosts or smoke, and his eyes keep sliding away from the edges of the trail. If he looks straight ahead, he cannot see them - only the snowy path, the way before, not behind.
Because, the heart says to him.
Because.
Always and forever.
Mandan is at a loss; no horns, no canyons, no children.
Why then, is he still here?
Because, murmurs the heart.
The bulk of him is persistent, resistant even to the thing that afflicts them all in the end - Death. Life rides his back hard, flays his bay sides to strips of tough leather and does not let him slow, even as he grows that much more older.
Why not?
Because, the heart talks a little louder.
That dumb slick muscle just won’t shut up. It fails to cease its erratic babble - thump, thump, thump. He is no fool to wish an end to it, though sometimes… No! It can’t stop - won’t stop, and he is miserable. This is no life for him, no horns atop his head to fuel his look of menace. No badlands to hide himself away in, even in his pathetic attempt to keep a herd. No miniatures of his massive self to dot the landscape on their stick-thin legs, to make that dumb slick muscle inside him grow in pride and joy. Nothing, there is but nothingness there now as there has been for years.
He is used to it, he tells himself.
Nothingness is not new to him, even as he stalks in long strides beneath the snowy branches of the dark sparse trees. He hates it here, a little less than he hates the meadow, but hates it just the same - these places hold too keenly to their memories, make them shiver and shake like ghosts or smoke, and his eyes keep sliding away from the edges of the trail. If he looks straight ahead, he cannot see them - only the snowy path, the way before, not behind.
Because, the heart says to him.
Because.