the killing dance; any

[sinew]

She is more than half-grown, more than a little wild, and so very fearless it isn’t right. She has been on strange adventures as little more than a foal to see a beautiful (in a sleek way that Sinew will never be) black mare in a lake beneath a purpling sky and danced around a colt-that-became-a-tiger in hip-high meadow-grass. She dreams of dry dust and high keening cries that come from throats rather than lips, sharp whistles that pierce the ears hard enough to make them bleed, and tusks that erupt from cheeks in ways that tusks should not burst forth through skin so garishly but then, Sinew who is not clairvoyant but merely immortal and so painfully aware of that immortality, dreams of her own first beginning and the many after and this latest birth, from which she grows up into a short but solid mare capable of holding her own - they often describe it as being hardy, in the way that weeds are both persistent and hardy. Sinew is the same. Sinew is… bored? It does not seem to be quite the accurate description for what she is. Restless, that does it! She is restless, reactive to some imaginary itch that licks along her bones, cracking them open down to the marrow to feast upon the very grit of her until she is thick with the rife of restlessness. It makes her less than idle, cagey and pacing upon a scant knoll that offers her a decent view of the meadow. There is no time-trip, no colt-tiger, no brush with danger that leaves her heady and breathless and brave and Sinew does not know how to respond to the lack of adventure in her life. Well, not true… she could dart along the edges of the war that brews and bubbles over but holds little interest for her beyond how it’s outcome will shape the rest of the world. Her mind turns over from the boar-tusk dreams to the childhood adventures to him - Tarnished, and his attempt to frighten her off that only made her laugh and ask him to do it again. She had a girlish crush on him - couldn’t be helped, he was her first interaction with a stallion and he left quite the impression upon her at such a tender age that she has grown up and sometimes, he is in her dreams and there are things that even she doesn’t want to remember that bubble up threatening to spill over. The chestnut overo gives a shake of her head and stares at them with eyes dark and shiny like blackberries - eyes, that are pure animal and her lips pull back from her teeth in a dare, a sucked in breath, and she chafes at the confinement of small, sharp movements she has reduced herself to to keep from going crazy. She thinks of running; a headlong dash might do her burning nerves some good but she sucks in a sharp breath and lets it out slowly, going still as prey stalked by a predator and it is silence that stalks her - a quiet that invades her, or sucks her outward, because it seems like Sinew isn’t there any more, just a quiet little new-made mare that stands atop a hill and looks down on them with nothing readable in her eyes and a face blanker than the cloudless bluest sky can be.