death seems better than the migraine in my head
When one is blind, you don’t exactly care whether or not it is night or day. There are subtle differences between them but Channary doesn’t really prefer one or the other. Daytime means that there are more horses out and about to bother her; nighttime means that one is more likely to stumble across someone with darkness in their hearts (like baby Channary on that night that seems so long ago now, though at the same time she can remember every excruciating moment like it happened just yesterday). Nighttime brings out the creeps. Or just horses like Channary.
Does she have darkness in her heart? Probably more than she cares to admit. She had been a sweet child until Flamevein had decided to burn out her eyes, and it has left her with a mean streak a mile wide. Some days she remembers the months of agony and the infections that nearly killed her and she knows that she is not a kind soul anymore, and it doesn’t particularly bother her. Someone else deserves to feel the pain that she was put through; everyone deserves to feel that pain.
The burns healed slowly, as do all terrible injuries, and she wants them all to know what she felt. She’ll never be beautiful because of the scars on her face; she’ll never take a lover because they’ll not be able to get past the hideous scarring that angles from her eyes to her cheekbones, nearly to her neck. If her eyes were still in their sockets, the pink flesh would make them look as if they were still on fire. Once, she had had the chance to become at least pretty, but the pyrokinetic stallion had torn away any chance for her to grow up beautifully.
She doesn’t want pity, though. She’s understood for a long time that she’ll never be beautiful and she doesn’t mind.
She doesn’t need beauty to be powerful.
The sound of a deep, resonating voice reaches her ears and the buckskin pauses, ears pricked in the direction the voice came from. Usually there is not this much conversation this late at night and she cannot help but be curious. She makes no effort to be quiet as she approaches (she already stumbles and shit because of the whole sightless-ness thing, why bother trying to hide?) and misses most of the reply by the other stallion. If only she could actually see them; their stark differences from normal horses would send most running. The patchy piebald just looks sinister, and then there’s the snake-stallion with scales and pointed teeth. With her burn scars, perhaps she fits right in.
“Are names truly that important to you, dear boy?” she asks dryly as she approaches, managing to stop her clumsy hooves before she intrudes on either of the stallions’ personal space (and without tripping over air, for once). “Names are powerful tools,” she continues, head pointedly not swinging between the two. “But clearly he already knows yours, which means that he probably knows mine already as well. I’m Channary.”
channary