Don't hold a glass over the flame - any

[Mauve]

SO WHEN YOUR HOPE'S ON FIRE 
BUT YOU KNOW YOUR DESIRE

(‘How did you know your rabbit was ready to come back to you?’ she asks her mother one evening, as they wander the shores of Tephra.

‘I didn’t, she replies, considering her daughter with a soft, sympathetic gaze, ‘I could not take it anymore, so I went to her.’)

She leaves endless summer for spring. Across the strait, in the in-betweens, the world changes drastically. Tephra is perpetual—warm and homely, vibrant and rich, but it is constant and reliable. Mauve likes the rambunctious and volatile. Or so she believes. 

Everyone romanticizes what they do not have and fancies the grass beyond their backyards.

The common lands follow laws beholden to rhythms; ebbs and flows that swing violently—cycles, between the harvest and the sow, all those mother’s lectures she spent her girlhood rolling her eyes at. And yet, as she pulls herself from the water, setting her eyes on the different things that grow along these snow-speckled shores, she knows the appreciation is there, in her like a seed planted deep and taken root.

The Mother’s work—nature and the nature of things;
The Coyote’s work—the mischievous elements of life;
Perhaps, the works of other forces beyond their hands and paws.

She finds her eyes are ever commanded to that hunched-over titan. She sighs, the morning air still cold enough to precipitate her breath. As a girl, it had felt like a holy war. She had been dogged about reuniting with her canine-self, a body she had and has never captained before. 

As she grow up, she finds the binds stretched are exhausting and taxing, and she turns her mind to other things—the ways stallions can make her flush without exchanging even a word, the way Tephra works from its insides, the independent spirit that keeps her hunting for things that live beyond her family.

Mother had said that she could not take it… and yet it feels much harder than just that, in practice. It feels insurmountable and as the immortal spirit of childhood relinquishes its grasp, she begins to harden in the emptiness, finding less pain in other undertakings.

Mauve traces the riverbank, gushing with new life under the thin patches of ice that still remain and with those that have splintered off. Around her, the exposed grass glitters with frost, white snowdrops and yellow cowslip yawn open to the world.

(Deep in her chest, a howl quavers urgently; her nose, wet and leathery, tests the air for all the quarry that has awoken.)

DON'T HOLD A GLASS OVER THE FLAME
DON'T LET YOUR HEART GROW COLD

PHOTOGRAPHY © RAY HENNESSY

[Canaan]

now and then there's a light in the darkness;
feel around 'til you find where your heart went.

    Time is unyielding; obstinate and steadfast as the minutes become hours and hours fade into days. A mindless wanderer, he does not worry himself with such useless nonsense – his mind is too taken with the pale light of morning shedding its gentle touch along a jagged horizon, painted in brilliant shades of lavender and indigo. Too drawn in by the splendor of a starlit sky, with a waning moon peeking out from a midnight canopy. Time has no meaning and it is a heavy burden placed on the weary shoulders of men; it has no place for him and it remains forgotten in the deepest recesses of his mind.

  Though he does not permit it to edge its way into his mind, he has little choice in the way that time etches into the marrow of his bones, carving long, statuesque legs and broad, sinewy shoulders out of the youth that had once enveloped him in its entirety. No longer did he give way to boyish features – his eyes set above rigid cheekbones, and his skull set atop a thick, heavy neck settled onto a solid, muscular frame.

  The gaunt, awkward youth has been whittled away, leaving a shadow of maturity in its wake, but still – the impish mirth lingers always, hidden within the golden flecks that gleam in his hazel eyes.

  Alas, with age came a restlessness that could not be stifled –a wildness that could not be contained within the tepid, ashen shores of Tephra. Just a breath beyond the age of two, he had ventured out beneath the covering of night, with nary a glance given to the molten lava and jagged, mottled andesite that had been every bit as much his upbringing as the salty brine of the sea.

  The warmth of day has yet to penetrate the frigid haze that lingers close to the thawing soil below, and an unnerving shudder of discomfort courses its way along the ridges of his spine. The sunlight is bleak, pale yet staunch in the way that it settles across his pallid skin, highlighting the edges of his shifting, stirring bones, which carry him aimlessly across the once barren plain.

  The buds were just beginning to the blossom with new life, and emerald threads of vegetation were beginning to emerge from where the soil had once been covered with a sheet of ice and snow. Lazily, he presses his whiskered lips against the crystalline flecks of sleet, tasting the sullied loam on his tongue – but soon his attention is drawn away by a brief flicker of movement, and the slightest smile reaches the golden rim of his eyes.

  It does not take but a heavy stride to close the distance between them, and with a gentle (and fleeting) lipping of her dark tresses along the ridge of her withers, he lures her away from the waters’ edge, a carefree grin worn along the crease of his dark mouth.

  ”Mauve,” he begins with warm honey laced in his coarse, rumbling tone. ”how long has it been? I almost didn’t recognize you.” A pause, with an exhalation of breath as his gaze flickers from the dwindling sun on the horizon to the soft curve of her features, which time has seemingly had its way with as well, leaving the shadow of a once petite, gangly filly behind. ”How have you been?”

Canaan

there's a weight in the air but you can't see why

[Mauve]

SO WHEN YOUR HOPE'S ON FIRE 
BUT YOU KNOW YOUR DESIRE

She is prone to falling into fits of gloom nowadays. Maybe it is the growing pangs, the way they twist her rambunctious grin into a somber and womanly pout; the way she has found herself pulling from that messy, carnivorous yip because the dreams seem too distant and childish and she is growing sick of the chase.

(The chase!
This one has been a protracted affair, dragging onto the heels of exhaustion.

But that’s the point. The prey starts to make mistakes...)

Mother would be so very disappointed to see her give up on her feral soul this way.
Her younger self would be horrified.

It seems she is all too enslaved to time. Not just in the marching, unstoppable progression of the seasons—this she admires now, between fleeting and longing glances at the mountain’s broody shape. The vivid colours of tenacious flowers, poking through the glittery snow and dotting the continents of exposed mud and yellow grass. Not just the nature of time, but also the way she begins to see time as a cruel master.

The young often do this, in their silly fits of gloom before perspective welcomes itself inward.

Needless to say, he comes at a good time. She is partially engrossed in solemn contemplation, partially in a cluster of dog violets, when he plucks gently at her hair, knocking some haze from her mind. She turns her bright, brown eyes in his direction, confusion pleasantly allayed by delight. Her rabbit’s cottontail waggles a bit and she takes a few quick, high steps from the bank. He has grown. So different from the boy she once crisscrossed Tephra with, one among a pack of many girlish hoots.

It makes her heartbeat quicken.
(Chase might have been a loose pastime to them—to her it was coyote and quarry, though she had decided against telling them that.)

She is different, too. She has abandoned the impractical long legs for slightly more practical short ones, having been gifted the diminutive size of her mother (though, proudly, a little bit taller). She is, as mother would describe, like a rock sat fast in a river. Sturdy and earthy; pony-ish, tempered by the wild, mustang heritage of her father.

“Canaan,” her voice has always had a slightly wily undertone, as if she looks for mischief in every wind that blows and every star that blinks. “I certainly wouldn’t have recognized you, so unencumbered by a gaggle of girls,” she smiles, moving along beside him, “too long. I have been... good.” The word good contains a sigh and it is not far enough from the truth for her to feel guilty, “if a bit restless on The Island. Where I haven’t seen much of you.” There is no accusation there. She gets it. Sometimes, she tests the merits of the wanderlust herself.

It is ingrained in her—a blood-thing, passed down through a couple generation of fickle women. “What have you been up to?” He carries many smells.

DON'T HOLD A GLASS OVER THE FLAME
DON'T LET YOUR HEART GROW COLD

PHOTOGRAPHY © RAY HENNESSY