Nestled among the roots of the large wisteria tree by Hyaline’s lake, Mazikeen sleeps. Although her wounds have been healed thanks to Ryatah, an ache in her head and the hollow place in her chest persists. She hasn’t brought this up with anyone, doesn’t want further energy wasted on her, but the presence of this ache makes her exhausted. She had tried to insist on going to Tephra as soon as she could stand but she had only made it a few steps before her energy and body gave out again.
She does not understand why she aches so much, why there is a deep weariness that makes her compliant to Sabal’s suggestion that she rest near the lake. She should be able to bounce back, should be ready to fight again. Mazikeen had known that something like this would happen, had been warned, and she should not need this long to recover. What if Gale and the Curse return? What if someone else is in trouble and she’s napping?
These thoughts make for restless sleep, and restless dreams, and when she drifts away she thinks she feels the slightest heartbeat in her chest.
Or maybe it is the pounding of her hooves in the dream?
In her dream, she’s not the mare she is now - eyeless and heartless and almost more scar tissue than flesh. She’s as bright-eyed and energetic as she had been before the eclipse, before this all began.
But she’s being hunted. She keeps trying to twist, to see who it is. Each glimpse is something different, something new - she cannot see a form but she sees the colours. Iridescent blue, teal and white, white and gold, black leopard spots on gold. Mazikeen does not recognize this pattern as the same as what had flashed across her coat as she died, fragments of everyone she’s known.
In her dream, she does not stand and fight as she would in life. Instead, she runs - and in the way of dreams, she is at once a mare, a filly, a fox, a deer as she does. Each step echoes so loud as they are timed with the beating of her new heart.
@[iridian]