07-18-2015, 11:41 PM
 The rough bark presses into her side, but the metal makes her numb to the feeling. Talulah feels numb in other ways, too, ways that are new to her. Even the breaths that she has to pull into her lungs are blank, her chest barely rising with the effort. She closes her eyes briefly, tries to shut out the worst of the panic, but she doesn’t like the uncertainty that not-seeing brings her. The worry she feels besides the numbness is less new – she’s felt it as a quiver in the corner of her heart for months, years even – but she’s grown accustomed to it. It’s an old burden she carries on her shoulders, a noose that feels more like a necklace for all the time she’s spent wearing it. But this? This is the gallows of her happiness. This is the executioner waiting too early, at the peak of her life. A heavy stone of apathy settles where the fear once sat comfortably within its chamber. Her breath is steady now, her pulse no longer in a race with her troubled thoughts. She looks about the Gates mildly, hardly realizing the extent of her foray into its borders. Of all the places she could have gone, why here? What has drawn her from the depths of her despair (despair of her creating? or a catalyst of change?) to the emerald plains of heaven? She has no time to think on the why’s or the how’s, even though the cogs have begun to turn again in her head. The sound of approaching hoof beats is proof enough of what she’s done, proof of the madness that has seized her entirely, mind and body alike. But she doesn’t tremble in the face of being caught. She doesn’t retreat or fall over herself in apology when the stallion comes near enough to see. She should do any of those things, all of those things for trespassing, but she doesn’t. And still she doesn’t care. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know,” the grey says, only half of her answer true. She’s not sorry at all, but she’s certainly uncertain. He is so earnest in his protectiveness, though (she hadn’t missed how he had thundered towards her at first) that she wants to give him more. “The answer would be politics on any other day.” Talulah looks away to make some space between herself and the willow, feeling uncertainty creep up for the first time. When she turns back towards the blue stallion from her new angle, the light hits him differently. He’s awash in the gold of the sun, and for a moment, the mare thinks of Tiphon. She knows the image of an angel all too well, and here is surely one before her. Her brief hesitation disappears then. “But today is not one of those days.” Talulah smiles a little, moving closer to the stranger so that the light hits him differently. She can’t think of angels and gold; she doesn’t want to remember the fear or the running. She just wants to feel something. The stallion is handsome in a way she is unaccustomed to noticing, but she’s far more drawn to his eyes. They are kind despite the questions lingering between his lids. She wants to pull that warmth from them. She wants to wrap herself in his sympathy the same way he has wrapped the sun around himself. She wants him to forget that she’s trespassed, wants him to pretend that she belongs here, just for now. The metal mare wants all of it, but she doesn’t say so. Instead, her amber eyes search his openly, almost pleadingly. Because she feels nothing but she also desperately wants to. He can drive her away or refuse her, she knows this, too. The possibility for rejection is there, and on any other day she would have worried at the potential. But today, blind courage compels her. “I’m Talulah,” she offers. It’s quiet and barely there, but she hopes he will take it. lady of the Dale |
