Brinly
She shouldn’t be here. She can feel the familiar anxiety begin to build inside of her, tightening around her throat like a noose. Just enough to remind her of the panic that was about to come; just enough to remind her what it felt like to choke. The golden mare seemed nice – genuinely nice. She reminded her of summer and warmth, and even though she can’t even catch a glimpse of whatever hidden turmoil that might be there, she seems so...normal. She can approach two strangers – both so guarded in their own ways – with smiles and hope, whereas Brinly can hardly make it a minute without suffocating on her self-loathing.
In her mind, she is stepping away. She is retreating back to the safety of the forest and the shelter of the mountains, far away from conversations she shouldn’t be trying to make, far away from the society she has no business being apart of. But her legs feel like lead, and so she just watches them, the sunshine and the lightning mare, willing to let the conversation drift on without her.
I don’t want to be alone either, she thinks to herself, and she almost confesses it to them, a brief feeling of desire to be transparent suddenly washing over her. But she thinks better of it, and she keeps it inside, instead. No one really wanted to be alone, or at least she assumes, and it seemed superfluous to state it aloud. Her body language said otherwise, anyway, with the way she has shifted away from them, and how she spends most of her time looking past them and at the river.
Her eyes find the silver mare, though, and she is surprised when she finds herself asking, “Back from where?”
— burn until our lives become the embers —