04-08-2017, 08:39 PM
He is not there.
Never there.
But he recognizes the ache in him that arises when she is not there. Recognizes that she had become tangled up in him somehow, in ways that he cares not to untangle or set her free - fool! It never lasts; the love and the happiness, it all turns dark and curdled in the end and he blames himself for the fall, and all the other things that came afterwards like his wings, the obedient and quiet way he launched himself after her into the darkening sky as the stars chased them across the sea and to the hot wild shore that he wanders now, and always. So in a way, he is there just absent from her side and he aches with the knowledge of it, aches in a way that he has never ached before and that scares and thrills him both.
Mandan doesn’t know exactly when he came to know that he loved her.
It might have the incredulous look on his face at the appearance of the sleek black feathers and hearty membrane that held him aloft alongside her, almost close enough for their wingtips to touch.
It could have been the way that every look was stubborn but equally telling of the love she couldn’t admit to herself any more than he could admit it to himself as a thing that each of them felt and knew existed.
Existed.
Exist.
Her name is a chant on his lips; a murmur in the glowing vile dark of the volcano as he lingers in its shadow, thinking of her and how he strayed since that moment their bodies acted as nature intended them to act. He is fearful but certain that come a gentler season, she’ll be thick with foal and possibly mad at him - he would be, if he was a mare with an errant stallion about her, errant and unattentive as he has been. It’s always like this, he’s just never around though for a time, he had been for others but only because their mothers had been just like him - wayward and consumed. None of them have ever been like her, sweet and stubborn and sure to raise her foal(s) up right. How can he seek her out now? He can’t. He doesn’t. His stupid heart says to do so but his dumb male brain says don’t. You don’t chase after snakes and bears and the things that will always end up hurting you.
Mandan listened to his brain and that was his mistake.
Stay away, it said. She’ll be mad at you.
He believed his brain over his heart, and his heart said find her, find her and tell her how much you love her and how sorry you are for leaving her.
His brain betrays him further even as his feet begin to listen to his heart and move of their own accord. It makes snide little questions about whether or not she could love him and sows the terrible seeds of doubt that slow his step even further until he stops again, considering and his face is dark beneath a terrible shadow of misgiving. So he abandons his own search for her and goes far from the places in Tephra that he inhabits and keeps back from even the parts of it that she inhabits, hoping to keep their paths from crossing for a bit until he can sort out the differences between his stupid heart and his lying brain. He fails though, and both rule him as much as the other does - hard and cruel, and the moment he makes a decision to follow one or the other, indecision mounts his back and jerks his head around until he stops, confused and awfully woeful.
He’d not have found her if not for all the soft groans and grunts that yielded up her birthing place amongst the ferns and fog. Mandan recognizes those sounds and their implication, and he visibly blanches - how could he have done this to her? She had been so small beneath him, so pliant and trusting and he’d spoiled her, ruined all that had been Exist. He almost couldn’t go to her, misses the faint naming of each twin and only dares to intrude the moment the world goes awfully still and quiet. His long nose pokes between the ferns until he catches sight of her beautiful apricot self standing there, but she is not alone… Her wings shield the rumps of not one but two! His mouth gapes open in surprise as he counts each set of four legs that are not her own. It is not long before his throat goes inexplicably dry and all he can manage to croak out around his guilt and grief is her name - “Exist.”