Djinni has watched her son sink beneath the water enough times to know that he is something different.
He is no more able to tell her what he is than his father is willing to, and time and time again the grey mare turns away rather than presses forward. There are always other things with which to occupy her time; that is a benefit of monarchy.
It’s been nearly a week since she has thought of him this time. That is a new record, the dun mare thinks as she looks down at the spread of red and orange trees below. From up here she cannot see the lake. From up here, everything seems distant and safe and harmless. From up here, she can almost pretend that none of it had ever happened. It would be easy, she knows, but there are always unforeseen consequences. Caution had come around at the same time as the rest of her emotion discovery, and it is one of her least favorites.
A decade ago, she’d have changed the trees from fire red to sky blue in the blink of an eye – simply because she wanted to. But now there are other things to wait for, better and more responsible ways to spend her magic.
What has she become?
She’s not sure she recognizes herself anymore.
Feeling anger is better than wallowing in regret, she decides, and appears in an instant beside @[Stillwater] (wherever it is he had been before her intrusion). Djinni is never settled after an encounter with the black stallion, never calm or at peace or feeling even slightly like the responsible creature she is expected to be. Poking at him is always better than poking into her own mind.
It is not wise to prod a beast, but Djinni has spent an entire week being wise and she is bored of it.
When she appears, she is ready with a verbal jab. Her mouth even beings to deliver it, but the words don’t come. In her week of Stillwater-empty thoughts she seems to have forgotten exactly why she had imposed the ban in the first place. The grullo mare is far from stupid, yet she curses her idiocy as her stomach plummets. Love is not always a happy thing, her father had once said, and it echoes in her head as she stares with misleadingly cold green eyes.
“What’re you doing,” she says suspiciously, as though she’s come upon him in the midst of some terrible misdeed and not something so dull as dozing or grazing or even looking out at the sea. It’s easy to hide behind suspicion, she finds.