Elanor weaved impatiently through the desert in the watery light of morning, climbing dunes and peering around cacti to try and find wherever Perun had wandered off to. It was impossible to try and track him in the sand, as soon as a hoof fell and lifted again, the hole filled back in with bright sediment and the wind swept it smooth. She frowns, her brow furrowing beneath the soft tuft of curling tawny forelock. There is a sound from somewhere in the half-shadow of morning, feet scuffling to find purchase. A smile spreads across her tiny mouth, those sapphire eyes dancing mischievously as she recalls Perun’s abhorrence to the sand. There isn’t even a flicker of doubt in her mind as she races around the tall dune that this could be anyone other than her stormy friend.
She’s wrong, of course, and so startled to find someone that looks so gruesomely identical to her mother that she nearly cartwheels over her legs when her feet suddenly become planted and immobile beneath her. For a long moment, an eternity of seconds stretched so tight she can hear them ringing like warning bells in her ears, she can only gawk. There’s no disgust on her face, no horror, just shock. But then that shock falters and fades, her eyes taking on a new gleam as she practically shouts her request at this stranger.
“STAY HERE DON’T GO ANYWHERE I’LL BE RIGHT BACK” She nearly chokes on her own tongue in her rush to get this out.
And then she’s gone, spinning on her heels and disappearing into the direction from which she came, a tail full of soft curls bobbing behind her like a flag as she retreated.
--
Else tensed like a frightened deer, the lean muscle rippling beneath the silver cobwebbing of her scarred skin as Elanor collided with her side, breathless and wide-eyed. Instinctively her eye hardened and lifted, peering past the girl to see if she was being chased. But she found nothing lurking in the shadows or morning and redirected her attention back to Elanor. With a furrowed brow and teeth clenched so tight she imagined she could hear fissures splitting them apart, she realized it was excitement and not fear that had reduced the champagne filly to full body trembles.
“You have to come with me! Hurry!” The filly urged, turning suddenly back to where she had come from.
Else followed quickly, her ears sinking back into the tangle of her mane in a display of obvious uncertainty. She kept up easily with Elanor’s small but urgent strides, her concern deepening each time the tiny champagne filly glanced back to make sure her mother was still following. For a second she felt nausea bloom in her stomach, remembering that Elanor had disappeared this morning to try and find Perun. What if she had found him and something was wrong? But she pushed back the thought weakly, reminding herself that Elanor hadn’t seemed frightened, just urgent.
They rounded the last dune together and Else has only a second before her eye drifts from the decidedly satisfied stance of her wild daughter to half-faced mare staring back at her. There is a roaring in her ears, deafening, and for a second the world seems to shudder beneath her. Oceans bleed away through fissures torn so deep the world should be halved and halved again. This moment is important, pivotal, she senses it more than she knows it, more than she understands- because how can she possibly understand the echo of a moment that didn’t exist anymore. But suddenly her soul had arms, hands, and they reached for this mare like a flower leans to the sun.
“I know you.” She mumbles through thickened muscle, that single glacial eye wavering with uncertainty. And her words are both a question and a statement, a memory that turns to dust just as soon as she’s thinks she’s grasped it.
“I knew you?” This leaves her lips in the shape of a question, her heart rattling around in a hollowed out chest as she traces a face that is both so strange and so familiar.
“I am you.” Just a whisper, a tremble as confusion fills her thoughts like fog.
He hadn’t intended for her to remember anything.
She flinches, subtly, fighting the urge to drop to her belly with the way her head suddenly throbbed.
and you take that to new extremes
