Once upon a time (birthing) - Gleam/Spark/any

[Spear + Spark]

For the first time in her life, she begins to know more and more of loneliness.

Spear has forsaken her for his own dreams and needs.

Giver comes and goes, always finding her - always orbiting around her, like now - as he comes back, happy and aglow with the stars back in his skin again. He had touched nose to cheek and her own small insignificant world righted itself a little more in that moment, from just that one connection of skin to skin.

He spread his starshine glow like sunlight and she came to crave it more than the sun itself. Happy to bask in his affections and constellations both, that she did not miss it (or Spear, cleaved so neatly from her that it was almost surgical in its precision - their split from one another and she did not have time to really mourn it either). But behind him, lurked a shadow of mare with flaming wings and a hard daring stare that left Spark curious as to why she bore the brunt of so much dislike, and sometimes, it caused a hint of unhappiness to lay to rest the smile about her lips.

Eventually, the shadowy mare went away and Spear still did not come back to her.

All she had was Giver and herself, and at times, she told herself this was all she needed.

At times, she told herself this was enough.

She traverses the hot and heavy landscape; often passing by the volcano and the orchids, a few of which have become stuck in the curling folds of her hair. Spark smells more and more like this landscape, exotic in some way but still just a horse - small, wooly, and often marred by grass stains or soot from long ago eruptions. Maybe she is less wild for having stayed put, but she cannot think of this now because he comes, happier than she has ever seen him. He seems changed, but she cannot think of how because she presses her nose to his cheek, aware that dusk creeps behind them and the stars in his skin will ignite the moment there is a healthy enough lack of light. For now, she steals that one touch and smiles up at him.

“Where have you been?” she teases softly, as if chiding a wayward colt that has only now come back to the herd.

He doesn’t answer her, and time marches on…

Time that keeps that together, sees them gone from one another less and less but she cannot stomach the way he looks at - stares, so often. His look of confusion is one that leaves her just as confused and even scared, like he is expectant and unrewarded. It starts to become too much for her, and she leaves him as he leaves her - him to the hot shores and sleeplessness, and her to the darker more volcanic heart of Tephra. The shadow of the volcano feels cold despite the heat that slumbers inside the big black rock, and at times, she leans against it - lets the volcano hold her up because she cannot stand it, their separation or the way he looked at her so much, every look more perplexing than the last! It sickened her until every bite of grass and every sip of water turned to ash in her mouth. When she can stand it no more, she pushes off the volcano’s hard black side and turns to find him --

GIVER!

The impatience and command in that single word alone, stuns her.

It takes her longer to find him then, facing the mare from long ago that always cast hateful looks at Spark like thrown stones. But the mare is not alone, even she can see that in the magnificence of light that binds all of them but Spark together. She looks at him and her in miniature, tucked up close to their mother’s side and she feels a tear or two roll down her cheeks and a hurt in her heart that she has never felt before.

(Gods, how she wished Spear was there!)

(He is not, and she is small and alone beneath the vastness of the deed that has been done and the way the world grows frighteningly bigger and darker despite the light of all of them before her.)

Unnamed emotion stops up her throat, and she is in some small way glad of that.

They may notice her and they may not, but she cannot stop staring at the foals that look like Giver and Alight.

(She knows now, that is why he fretted in quiet and looked at her so much - he looked for signs in her that were never there to begin with, and she remains virginal and small while Alight looks like a conquering goddess all aflame. Spark hates her for that, hates her for but a moment as her own heart cracks open beneath a great weight of betrayal.)

Spark