Her resolve is suddenly much stronger than she is.
All the times she’s thought about returning home now coagulates her runner’s blood. It is a surety now that she will once again walk the endless plains of the Gates. She will not go without her burdens (abandonment, dishonor, disgrace – all weights pressing her further into the soil, anchoring her from leaving again), but she will go. Isn’t that all that matters in the end? Looking back, isn’t the result held in a higher regard than all the steps it took to get there? Yes, she had run away from the spiraling, smoking mess that heaven had become. But she will also run back.
It is not a matter of will she return, but how quickly.
Emmerly hasn’t made it more than a couple dozen steps through the murky woods when he comes to stand in front of her. He is as different as the places she has surrounded herself with. Something tugs at the edges of the instincts buried deep within her, though. Tells her that his company should never be a choice as the forests and fields had been before. It isn’t fear – not yet, anyway – but a sharp wariness that protests against him. It is a soldier’s intuition that readies her limbs and steadies her breath, just in case.
“Not disturbing, perhaps.” Her own voice is heavy and rough, disuse compounding its naturally dark timbre. Her tone doesn’t betray the fact that he disturbs her. And at first, she doesn’t know why. It isn’t the cleaving of his hooves nor the ratty, tattered wing that leaves a rivet in the soft ground behind him. It isn’t the hard set in his searching eyes nor the smallest of smirks making his face its own contrasting battleground. It’s not even the deadly horns that curve up and between his ears, strange in and of themselves but seemingly perfectly placed atop his skull.
She is disturbed by the radiation he emits.
But because she’s always been fool-hardy and reckless, she takes a step closer and lets it wash over her.
“You are blocking me, however.” Emmerly is near enough to the stallion to see each delicate curl of the lashes ringing his eyes. Unlike his horns, she thinks they do not belong on such a face. She also thinks that she will rip each and every one out if he tries to prevent her from returning home. Proximity has never bothered her in the slightest (in fact, the buckskin paint usually seeks it out), but she is relying on the hope that the stallion will be less inclined to her closeness. They are so near that she can feel the heat building between their bodies. Em welcomes it, lets it simmer until the pressure is too much for the palomino to take.
She refuses to move backwards; the Gates lies ahead.
And despite her instincts telling her to dive to either side and continue on (not backwards, but any other way – not this one), she does not budge. Fear is what drove her away the first time. Fear is what stayed on her back long after she tried to shake it, spurring her far from her rightful place in the world. Fear is the enemy, and if this stallion is the last hurdle to overcome it, she will face it head on.
“You might want to consider a detour, stranger.” This last bit is softer, even kinder than her words before. Em gives him an out if he wants to take it. Because if he doesn’t, if he lets the offer melt into the heated space between them, she will believe her instincts. Somewhere high above the pair, a leaf breaks from its branch at the stem. Detached and deadened, the leaf spirals down, down, down to the ground below. The first sign of autumn, and the mare newly minted in resolve and remorse does not notice.
Emmerly
walter x valien