Something taps at her side in the water and she looks down. She does not react to the bit of hide that floats there, the long strands of mane that drift in the black water beside her before sinking into the blood red liquid. The water moves, splashing against her as it is displaced in his flee to the shore, but she doesn’t look up. Even the bright moon cannot penetrate that tainted water, and with a quiet sigh, she sinks below the water.
There, hidden, she screams. It’s not in pain – that should be long gone. But though her bloody shoulders are quiet and her tattered withers mute, something remains that leaves a hard pit in her belly. It burns like ice, and she boils the water around her in an instant before she glides beneath the water and resurfaces before him in the shallow water. The water here at shore was not yet tainted, but as it touches her shredded neck it grows darker, filling the water in a way that emotion does not fill Djinni’s eyes.
He is a monster.
She should kill him.
Instead she apologizes.
“I’m sorry.” She says as she reaches out to caress him where he sprawls on the shore. She should be fleeing but she does not, but she stops a hair’s breadth away from contact. Admitting wrong is as novel as the fear, and the cacophony of new emotions that rattle through her are enough to still her attempt to touch him again. Djinni is not happy but she does not solve it immediately. She always does and now she does not, and there is something about the black stallion with her blood staining his jaw.
She wants him happy, more than she wants herself happy. It is terrifying
“I’m sorry,” The words are even softer this time. Her bright brown eyes are quiet, sad, and she is gone before she’s truly finished saying, “I didn’t mean to.”