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The darkness compounds the sounds of those creatures and beings moving underneath the eclipse. I can hear them coming and my pangs of loneliness are abruptly beaten back by anxiety and uncertainty. I know it is not him, my tormentor – the shadows lie too still, dormant without his touch. Nor is it my inattentive savior and his protégé – I smell only horse, not the reek of a thousand different beasts. It is someone I’ve smelt before, though, and as the steps draw closer, I search the blurred halls of a memory where hurt and loneliness reign. My legs shift restlessly without actually taking me anywhere, a physical outlet for the apprehension that stirs in my gut.
They stop a few paces away from me and I can only make out a vague outline. My feet go still even as my heart pounds. I squint and twist my head, as if the motions will help me to see the silent unknown. The harder I stare, the brighter they – she – becomes … white hide clings to her well-wrought limbs, so white they’re nearly blue … my gaze travels upward, briefly touching the gold barring, before finding and meeting a haughty blue gaze that strikes a chord I’ve known before. Just as our eyes meet, the light grows,, the white of my blaze mimicking the glow of hers. And then it blinks out, gone and darkness presides yet again.
I forget my anxiousness when the foreign memories come, sliding the final piece of the puzzle into place. She had found me in the Forest once, invading my mind – a gentle touch on the sadness that pervades, where theirs was forceful and aching – but unwelcome just the same. Much as they had so many days ago, my ears find themselves buried in the knots and mats of my mane. “I don’t like –”, I start to say, but then she … speaks. She had not done that before. Her voice is not what I might have expected; teasing without hurt, her words tinged with the hint of a smile. “No,” I start. “It’s just …” I stop again, guarded as a shadow of distress cracks across my memory.
After several beats of thought, I lick my lips and find my voice again. “I don’t want to be trapped anymore.” She escaped once – I can remember the sequoias and the magic that kept us – her, because I know that I wasn’t there, but I still feel as though I was. I’ve escaped, too, but I still have nowhere to go. Gold eyes, black eyes, both flash in my mind, eyes that wish me harm, to wield me as if I am not a living creature. I am trapped for as long as I’m living, I’m sure of it.
@[Aela]