The sound of his name from her lips draws him back;
He had lost himself in thought, in recognition of this half-brother that shares the same blood as he does, and he only knows this because blood calls to blood beneath their skins. But it seems that the painted stallion has left them, and only the rose gray mare and the bay stallion remain, their skins smelling of nature shared and untamed though the scent is somehow sweeter upon her than on him, where it is rough, dry, dusty. She asks a simple question but he thinks his answer might be as convoluted as the whorls of a fossilized shell from an ancient lakebed, when in truth he knows the answer is as simple as her question. “From here,” he says matter of factly, not elaborating on where ‘here’ was exactly but his head makes a broad sweep of a gesture that encompasses the whole of the meadow and that is all he has for her by way of explanation.
Mandan could indulge her further and say that he was from here, even the point of his conception had occurred one unkind autumn moment in this very land. The act had been far from rape but also far from gentle too, from what Scalped had told him, for she kept nothing back from her leggy curious children, especially not the birds and the bees of acts as natural as breeding (to which he is now no longer a stranger but that is for another time and another place). His origin-story began here, in the meadow, like most of them do. He is suddenly curious about her origins - “And what about you? You smell like the earth,” and what more can he say than that really? She smelled like the earth birthed her itself, from between fissured thighs of clay and stone, and to him, it was a heady mixture rich and enticing.
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****Her origination had been sustained by a force beyond convention. Bending the elastic rules of conception and family. Her mother is one of those demigods that walk this land – bestowed with the ultimate creativity of near unhindered power. A beginning that flies most in the face of the dirt and blossom of her later life; but absent that magic, she would not be here. Sparked to life in a way so unlike the simplicity of soil and seed, unlike the coition she is so happily accustomed to; divinely conceived, out of a puddle of sheer improbability and sisterhood.
****But her birth had been remarkably ordinary. Tumbled out, damp and unsure, onto a cradle of dark earth and fan leaves. Greeted by the pre-dawn chorus of insect hums and the howl of primates; she remembers nothing of the green murk or that day, of course. To understand had been well beyond the sphere of her yet developed brain. Her mother had led her from the verdant and heady soup of her deliverance and into the subdued beauty of the hinterlands.
****Where they both came to be who they are today, all folksy and horsehair.
****“As good as here.” Her mother may as well have been the land herself – it is how Vineine had always seen Elladora. All rock and moss and petals, the bowing of a flower stalk against a breeze, the trill of songbirds on her breath. And when she fell, she had given herself to the roots willingly. “The jungle, for my first moments. But not for very long thereafter.” That place is just as wild as these common haunts, its soil rich enough to nurse the mighty breadth of living things contained within. Maybe more so, for its size and inhospitable nature. The sisters have succeeded in taming only a portion of the rainforest. “I was raised here.”
****Out in this sweet air she had loved, and birthed her foals, gifting them a similar perfume. “I have returned to the jungle, just recently.” Drawn back. After a long time in temperateness, the tropical air has been slowly settling into her haunches and shoulders as if an old friend. Still, she returns here often to observe the extremity of the seasons, absent in that constant warmth. “And you? Are you a nomad?”
****Is it possible to shed it from their hearts in full?
*magic-borne daughter of Prague and Elladora
****‘...Herself in the Heavens, her beam on the waves.’
- amazonian and mother -
If she is divinely conceived, then he is of that simple spark of life that she is so used to - that old act of copulation that results in a foal afterwards, an ancient dance of stallion and mare though nowadays, few seem to engage in the actual courtship rituals of posturing and grooming that soften a mare up and he has seen too many simply mount and take what they think is theirs. Make no mistake, he is not oblivious to these violent urges either but Scalped would take it out of his hide if she ever learned her son had not followed the natural order of things (or found love, though she herself has never known it and doesn’t dream of it) and simply acted as crassly as others do - she raised him better than that, and he owed it to her to be more than a base instinctual (he was that, to some degree) creature. But if she was divinely conceived, he was not and perhaps that was part of the intrigue that drew him close to her, like a faint smell of something old and magical that burrowed its way beneath her skin and stayed there, almost like a faint hum of electricity.
He is wondering if they will spark if he touches her when she responds to him and his eyes slide to hers, wayward and full of good nature. It is on the tip of his tongue to say that they are one and the same then, raised up on the backbone of the meadow but she is talking still and he finds that he cannot help but listen, unable to interrupt and add his own thoughts to the tale she tells because there is a measure of enchantment in her voice that holds him still and hostage in those moments, stiller than he has ever been, almost afraid (he scoffs inwardly at this!) that the slightest twitch of muscle might break the moment wide open into a thousand irretrievable pieces and he is too greedy to let that happen. He feels in a way he does not feel when he is with his beloved and her salmon-pink points and their quick fall into something he still does not understand. “The Jungle,” he muses aloud, having heard of it of course but it sparks a curiosity in him that begs to be sated one day with a peek at something so loamy and humid that it drips from her voice with the heavy thick weight of honey.
“I was,” he begins haltingly, because he gave that up for love and still doesn’t understand it. How can one give up their very nature? Maybe that is why he constantly returns to the meadow, to observe and stray (in ways Ygritte might never forgive him for) and indulge that nomadic side of him that is too inherently part of him to simply ignore. “I’m in the Falls now.” He cannot shake the roar of the water over rocks and air from his ears, the sound still thunderous and haunting even here, in the buzzing din of conversation that goes on around them and to which they are seemingly separate from, their conversation low and pleasant unlike so many that paint the air with the hum of anger and hate.
“I divide my time between here and there,” he explains without further explanation, supposing that she - like him - slips away from their respective homes to the meadow, to crest her grassy knolls and walk down her dusty trails that see so much use from more than just the two of them. He supposes that like him, she cannot help it - this place is in their blood and their background as much as anything else, like daylight and starfall, pulse and flutter of lung, the meadow is as much as them as they are it.
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