01-12-2017, 10:54 PM
As her own words escaped her lips, they became the catalyst to her emotional undoing. She was no longer strong enough, could no longer carry herself through the solitude that accompanies many a traveller lost. Her lithe, pale body grew tense as she trembled to halt the will of her unshed tears. She had curved her head away from them, an action to safeguard the fragility of her emotions – to endure this long on her own, she’d had to be strong, never crack. Too late, she thought, and a solitary tear, welled for too long in the lower lid of her eye finally fell, and skimmed against the delicate hairs of her cheek.
She had chosen this, hadn’t this been what she had wanted? Her mother had cursed her for forsaking the ways of her people, for her stubbornness against her mother’s constraints, against her upbringing. But she had known that wasn’t what she was, could never become. And so she had fled, though not without emotional scars. Though for a time there, alone and wild and unconstrained, all had been well. Until it wasn’t.
The touch of his muzzle against hers brought her back to them. The great stallion’s breath a warmth that was able to meld her fracturing pieces back together. And little Heda’s words, well, they filled her with a hope that she couldn’t comprehend fully but was nonetheless there. She turned and rested her gaze once again on them both. Her big brown eyes dewy with moisture having streaked both cheeks wet. She had chosen to be alone for so long, but that didn’t need to mean forever.
Their solution was warm, welcoming. And in this moment it felt right.
Go with them, she willed herself. Leave this behind. Become something, anything, rather than the soulless shell of a filly she felt she was slowly yielding to. “I would like to see…” she spoke to them both, her voice almost unheard.