life unfolds in pools of gold
I am only owed this shape if I make a line to hold
He walks out into the ocean.
The cold water chills his bones as it swirls in little eddies around his legs. It numbs him, nearly, makes him forget the many miles between here and his former life. Because there are so many between here and there and there and there (so many homes he’s had, so many places he’s rested his head, if only briefly). As he sinks further into the sea, he lets go of everything, lets go of himself. The waves break on his belly, sending the contents to roil, too, but still he walks. His feet find purchase on the grainy sand underwater until they don’t, and the stallion is forced to paddle to keep himself afloat.
It is too tiring, too quickly, this motion.
And while the water had at first been like a blissful sedative, now it settles like a stone in his guts. He is like the sea, Buckthorn muses in his dawning revelation that he might not make it back to shore, that he might slip under at any moment. Deceivingly calm and inviting in the shallows, but turbulent and treacherous the deeper one went. He has always loved the water. It is in him, has been programed in his genes to be drawn to the crashing, smashing waves that once kept his grandmother under without harm. He doesn’t know this, though. He only knows that the ocean will spit him back out before it fills his lungs completely. In this (and maybe only this), he has faith.
So he is tossed about from one foam-capped swell to another but is never pulled further out or down. Instead, the black and white finds the cool yellow of the shore. He stumbles onto it – just barely – before sinking to his knees in utter exhaustion. The edge of the ocean laps at his monochrome tail, unable to fully release him from the game of life and death. Buckthorn coughs and spits brine water onto the sand, the salt searing in his throat and eyes. It is a good burn, though, a reminder on his lips of his rebirth that he will taste for days to come. Long enough to keep his fire lit. Long enough to decide if this is where he will stay, for now.
buckthorn