[private] this is it, the apocalypse

[caledonia]

there's a voice that pulls me stumbling through a symphony
and the less of it I need, the more I get

Caledonia relies heavily on her hearing. It’s always been the case, but without the use of her sight, the other senses have sharpened in her young age—leaving them to be somewhat of a crutch, a way for her to experience the world without being able to see it reflected back to her. In some ways, she is glad for the relative quiet of Pangea. The land teems with life, but it is the kind that lives in the shadows. It is not overly loud (except when the one strange boy is around—he is quiet verbal) which means that she is better able to hear the nuances, the whispers, the small sounds that so often go undetected.

But not today.

Today the noise is a loud one.

She startles when she hears the crack and swings her head around, her ears pricking. She hears the sound of the tumbling rocks, the loud crash, and then, finally, the scream. Her heart clenches in her chest and although she wishes she could simply fade into the background—hide in the shadows until someone far more qualified than her arrives—she knows she is likely the closest thing to the source of the sound.

Grimacing, Caledonia begins to pick her way through the rubble, stumbling as she makes her way down a path completely unfamiliar to her. Her hooves strike rock more than once and she feels it reverberate up her legs, making her very bones ache, but she continues to move forward—trying to follow the source of the sound. When she is near, she notices the way the ground beneath her grows damp, the way that the rocks become more clustered together, the way that the scream seems to echo in her chest.

“I’m here,” she pants, slipping slightly, not noticing the way the blood stains the white of her legs. “Are you okay? What happened?” She swivels her head again, trying to figure out where she is, where the girl is. Finally, she drops her nose to the ground, the blood creeping up her pink nose. She snorts and feels lightheaded, but she assumes it is from the fear, the confusion, the stumbling trying to get here.

She pants, her head growing heavier. “I’m here,” she says again, continuing to use her nose to try and find her way until it bumps up against the feel of something warm and alive. An exhale. “I’m here,” but this comes out slurred, her head pounding and pulse racing. She has no way of seeing the way that her body begins to warp, the way the blood she has breathed in, practically bathed in, has begun to change her so quickly in the few minutes that she has been here. She has no way of knowing anything at all.

Without a word, she slumps to the ground, nose pressed against the other filly.

’til I'm swept up by the shape of all the centuries
like an echo in the chambers of my chest