11-09-2019, 05:55 PM
Truth be told, the little red mare had not expected there to be an afterlife.
She had not expected, when her eyes shut, that she would re-open them anywhere, and for a long time, she simply didn't. Well, perhaps it was a long time, it may have been no time at all, it doesn't seem to matter much, in Eternity. For an inestimable amount of time, the stocky chestnut was quiet and dim and her world was dark, but the dark was peaceful and she did not mind it. Her life had been one of travel, a nomad's life, never in any one place for very long, though perhaps in Beqanna for the longest. The Forsaken Valley, a silly place for someone like her.
What does she remember? Her connection to Life seems so tenuous now, but she does remember dying, in a wobbly, grey, sort of way. It had been nothing, in the end, for all the fear it had invoked in the years that preceded it. She had left Beqanna for a nomad's life, never quite adapting to the everyday magic and strangeness there, and for - what? Fifteen years, twenty, perhaps? A decade or two traveling the world beyond, until it became impossible to take another step.
But she had been old, then, if we are discussing wild horses and not magic ones, and that life had been abandoned for the adventure that lay abroad. There are always sacrifices. She had seen so many things, so many summers, so many sunsets, tens of foals rising to challenge for their own places in the world. Was it so wrong that one day, unable to keep her weight well and perhaps more than a little arthritic, she'd closed her eyes in the rare warm sun of a bright and wind-less winter's afternoon, and simply didn't re-open them again? Not until an odd pressure in her ears awakes her, pressing against the inside of a skull that should be beyond feeling.
Yet where has she awoken? And why?
She had not expected, when her eyes shut, that she would re-open them anywhere, and for a long time, she simply didn't. Well, perhaps it was a long time, it may have been no time at all, it doesn't seem to matter much, in Eternity. For an inestimable amount of time, the stocky chestnut was quiet and dim and her world was dark, but the dark was peaceful and she did not mind it. Her life had been one of travel, a nomad's life, never in any one place for very long, though perhaps in Beqanna for the longest. The Forsaken Valley, a silly place for someone like her.
What does she remember? Her connection to Life seems so tenuous now, but she does remember dying, in a wobbly, grey, sort of way. It had been nothing, in the end, for all the fear it had invoked in the years that preceded it. She had left Beqanna for a nomad's life, never quite adapting to the everyday magic and strangeness there, and for - what? Fifteen years, twenty, perhaps? A decade or two traveling the world beyond, until it became impossible to take another step.
But she had been old, then, if we are discussing wild horses and not magic ones, and that life had been abandoned for the adventure that lay abroad. There are always sacrifices. She had seen so many things, so many summers, so many sunsets, tens of foals rising to challenge for their own places in the world. Was it so wrong that one day, unable to keep her weight well and perhaps more than a little arthritic, she'd closed her eyes in the rare warm sun of a bright and wind-less winter's afternoon, and simply didn't re-open them again? Not until an odd pressure in her ears awakes her, pressing against the inside of a skull that should be beyond feeling.
Yet where has she awoken? And why?