DESPONDENCE --

She curls around the body of a fat, knotted old beech tree.
She dances. She is lithe and nimble. Rhythmic. 
But she never goes far. She pirouettes away from her mother, into the green shade of the snow-white birches. And for a moment the older mare's breath catches in her throat. She squints past patches of golden sunlight, halting to wait for the younger to return to her side. 

She curls around the body of a fat, knotted old beech tree, skipping close to brush the black shoulder of her expectant mother, allaying all of her fears once again. 

This is an emotional dance; a new one for the black and white mare.
She is as unaccustomed to the agonies of devotion now, as she had been to the sharp pangs of delivery. The confusing, uncharted territory of childbearing is, perhaps, nothing compared to the anxiety of rearing for an untried mother. She nips at her neck as the filly moves to sidle away again, a gentle reprimand, and shakes her head. Enough. The girl acquiesces, pressing against her ribs. She is a good girl. 

The mare is hollow-eyed, but she has always been a worried looking sort. Not homely, but drawn thin and bedraggled. Her long mane is always rough and windblown–she is fine and lean, but always seems so weighted down, somehow. Vilhelm once said she looks forlorn at her best, and downright despondent at her worst.

The older chews absently on the girl’s short mane as they meander through the forest. 
She stops suddenly, glancing up at her mother, and grins. Her coat shifts and changes from her natural bright red and white, to a vibrant array of peacock greens and blues, turquoise and plum. She is so unlike her mother. She is vigorous to the core–a wild little ember, coughed loose from a blaze. She stares up with childlike eagerness, her wide blue eyes searching the hollows of that black and white face for something like pleasure or surprise. Anything. 
Like petals yawning open for the sun.

The mare smiles and opens her mouth, pushing out short chuffs of air from her chest–laughter–and bends down, touching her filly’s brow. A funny girl. And then she sighs, an airy exhale, and shifts her weight, squinting up through the holes in the canopy. Day is waning, growing yellowed around the edges. Despondence frowns down at the filly, just as a deep, blue darkness spreads across her prominent young bones and ungainliness, adorned with points like stars and comets, frozen on her shoulders and hips. The girl giggles and winks, then noses her groin for a teat.

Her smile wavers as the starry girl disappears in the crook of her belly.
The nighttime is unsafe and unkind, and unstoppable.
She reaches back, nibbling at her babe's dark tail.