The sound of his hooves behind her echo through her body, growing ever louder, spurring the adrenaline in her body. There is a brief moment during which Minette truly believes she will escape. There is the high clear note of a bird as it cries. Black birds flock in the sky. Her breathing becomes labored.
The heights of her hope only cause the depths of her despair to rend her heart the deeper.
Stones clatter. The chill winds picks up and flies straight through her chest. She has gone the wrong way. She knows in an instant that she caught. The steep face of the mountain rises before her. The swiftness of her halt, her feet scrabbling for purchase beneath her as she stops, might have been comical if it hadn't been the precursor to her punishment.
For a pause in time she stands, facing Gryffen with her sides heaving and her head held high. She takes small victory in the trickle of blood dripping down his chest. Then the intensity of his unreadable gaze slowly subdues her. Rage filters from her body and is replaced with terror and shame. It is then that the white stallion with the burning red eyes attacks.
A terrible fear fills her, and she squeals at the first strike of his teeth. He is purposeful, almost lover like in his harsh caress of her body. She fights him, unable to calm the powerful animal instinct as he draws blood. And then he takes her completely, forcing himself upon her. Minette squeals in pain, her whole world one of teeth and brute strength. The white of her mane becomes streaked with blood, coloring the strands until she is a different horse.
When he is finished with her, she sinks to the ground, panting and huffing.
His final blow hits just beside her eyeball, tearing the flesh away as easily as bark is split from the dead tree. Blood pours from the wound, and she screams. His words reach through her agony, lingering in her ear.
…no more swimming for you little minnow…
And he leaves.
Time passes. It take a full rising and setting of the sun for Minette to gather the strength to dip her head into a nearby stream of freezing water. She cannot stomach the thought of food and so her weight slowly begins to melt away.
Gryffen leaves her alone, but she never doubts that he is nearby. His stench fill the land, and is occasionally joined by that of other females. Minette wonders bleakly if they, too, have been taken and subdued.
And always the ravens. The black birds of the damned peer at her like reapers. She imagines that they wish she would die, and she does her best to pretend they do not exist.
What she cannot ignore is the ache of her wounds as they reluctantly heal. The bites on her neck and shoulders are messy but not terribly deep. The rip of flesh above her left eye festers and swells, and when it finally begins to mend, leaves the beginnings of a curved scar. Minette knows she should be grateful she can still be see, but she cannot find the strength to do so.
Especially when she realizes her body is no longer her own.
After a few weeks of her enforced starvation, her ribs show and her coat has lost its sheen, yet her stomach begins to show the slightest signs of swelling. She walks slowly, silver scars glinting through her pale gray coat, and her wandering limited to the very center of the territory. She fears her next encounter with the stallion who mastered her, his lesson burned upon her mind and his eyes searing into her soul.
Minette has never felt so vulnerable and alone. She is almost completely broken, the fight wrenched from her breast like an apple being plucked. Only deep, deep inside her does a banked fire flicker in the soul of the pale gray mare.
She waits for her conqueror to appear, a question waiting on her lips.