‘And stars, in their orbits, shone pale, thro' the light
Of the brighter, cold moon, 'mid planets her slaves
Herself in the Heavens, her beam on the waves.’
She has allowed the girl to take her other form more and more. To master the differences in that body and that soul. To know when to run, and when to hide, and how. It is imperative that she know all this. Because she cannot turn away from her dichotomy. It is in her. Not just a way she can transform her flesh, but a part of her as inborn as her equinity. The Mother’s own hand had soldered her to the remaining stuff of that unfortunate kit.
They were one in the same. Born in similar sightlessness and deafness. Brought into the world as hairless and pink as the other, but as one had exited (so untimely) the other was just readying herself to enter.
Vineine would be asking for the rest of her life, why the Mother had chosen her to act through. In the weeks since her strange delivery, she has woken up at night unsure and drawn to pace and mull. She had given herself almost entirely to the pursuit of understanding Her. Until she came to understand instead that this is too lofty a goal, and so she spent her hours understanding Her ways and works. But nature is always evolving, and always mutating; it is cyclical and predictable, and it has its many surprises every day.
She had not expected when she reached to comfort the rabbit youngling that she would become a vessel of Her will.
Longear stays by her side in her filly form, stopping here and there to look at a monarch’s orange and black wings, or a squirrel chattering away on a branch angrily. Vineine watches patiently, explaining this and that, and nibbling at grass. This is she used to, the daily time spent sating the curiosity of a babe.
She picks their path habitually today, bringing the girl to places she knows well. But it is Longear, as it tends to be, that diverges and drags her mother behind. “Longear!” the rose grey mare hisses, with the ragged edge of tested patience.
The scent of wolf fur stings her nostrils, the sharpness of memory along with it.
“Longear, be careful!” She catches up to her filly in a few rushes strides, roughly reaching down to nip her shoulder and push her body in front. She looks around, frenzied in her movements, and her daughter responds with a raised cottontail and nervous ears. Vineine’s nostrils flare, and she dances away from the scent again, pushing the buckskin filly back.
And then, against the cold, bare earth, huddled in green shade she sees the pup.
At first she thinks of only the mother. Where she must be, and yet and the little one seems so desperately alone and uncared for.
The warbler nestling. The kit. Her life has been punctuated by lesson told through ill-fated young. They are impressively effective subjects, and the Mother uses them liberally. But this one is not dying, not like the warbler, or the kitten. This one is simply alone, and the mare holds back her filly and sighs, because she can do naught for it but leave and let it be. And alone is as good as dead.
And yet she stays, as she had with the warbler and the kit, to wonder on the wisdom in this. I understand that life is indiscriminately hard... I do...
magic-borne daughter of Prague and Elladora
- amazonian and mother -
Of the brighter, cold moon, 'mid planets her slaves
Herself in the Heavens, her beam on the waves.’
She has allowed the girl to take her other form more and more. To master the differences in that body and that soul. To know when to run, and when to hide, and how. It is imperative that she know all this. Because she cannot turn away from her dichotomy. It is in her. Not just a way she can transform her flesh, but a part of her as inborn as her equinity. The Mother’s own hand had soldered her to the remaining stuff of that unfortunate kit.
They were one in the same. Born in similar sightlessness and deafness. Brought into the world as hairless and pink as the other, but as one had exited (so untimely) the other was just readying herself to enter.
Vineine would be asking for the rest of her life, why the Mother had chosen her to act through. In the weeks since her strange delivery, she has woken up at night unsure and drawn to pace and mull. She had given herself almost entirely to the pursuit of understanding Her. Until she came to understand instead that this is too lofty a goal, and so she spent her hours understanding Her ways and works. But nature is always evolving, and always mutating; it is cyclical and predictable, and it has its many surprises every day.
She had not expected when she reached to comfort the rabbit youngling that she would become a vessel of Her will.
Longear stays by her side in her filly form, stopping here and there to look at a monarch’s orange and black wings, or a squirrel chattering away on a branch angrily. Vineine watches patiently, explaining this and that, and nibbling at grass. This is she used to, the daily time spent sating the curiosity of a babe.
She picks their path habitually today, bringing the girl to places she knows well. But it is Longear, as it tends to be, that diverges and drags her mother behind. “Longear!” the rose grey mare hisses, with the ragged edge of tested patience.
The scent of wolf fur stings her nostrils, the sharpness of memory along with it.
“Longear, be careful!” She catches up to her filly in a few rushes strides, roughly reaching down to nip her shoulder and push her body in front. She looks around, frenzied in her movements, and her daughter responds with a raised cottontail and nervous ears. Vineine’s nostrils flare, and she dances away from the scent again, pushing the buckskin filly back.
And then, against the cold, bare earth, huddled in green shade she sees the pup.
At first she thinks of only the mother. Where she must be, and yet and the little one seems so desperately alone and uncared for.
The warbler nestling. The kit. Her life has been punctuated by lesson told through ill-fated young. They are impressively effective subjects, and the Mother uses them liberally. But this one is not dying, not like the warbler, or the kitten. This one is simply alone, and the mare holds back her filly and sighs, because she can do naught for it but leave and let it be. And alone is as good as dead.
And yet she stays, as she had with the warbler and the kit, to wonder on the wisdom in this. I understand that life is indiscriminately hard... I do...
- amazonian and mother -