01-08-2026, 05:48 PM
That everything good is happening somewhere else?
Sunshine and company, and birdsong, too. The quietude of the moment soothes the alerts raised in my nervous system by the predatorial stallion beside me and I slip easily into my usual mode: letting time pass, enjoying the small moments to justify my immortality. By the time he raises his head from our meal, I feel put at ease, raising my own Arabic head to meet his gaze straight-on.
You look familiar. Warship.
A droplet of memory ripples the surface of my awareness. Warship.
As I retrace the threads of the past, my wanderings externalize: from the coronet of my forehoof facing Warship, a pine tree sprouts, grows, and looms, its peaked top reaching to my crown. It erupts, the flames eating away its coniferous greenery until all the remains is its skeletal trunk and branches, lit for the indefinite future. The creator of my once-idol whispers in my mind, her voice quiet, strong, imbued with authority and familiarity.
I smile.
"Warship," I repeat in my honey-whiskey tone. "A pleasure to meet you again after all these decades." The tree along my shoulder fades as the portrait of a tobiano Arabian materializes, her intelligent eye glimmering, finding Warship in tandem with myself. "My name is Kavi. I am uncle to Straia, with whom I believe you may have once had a dalliance." My ears perk, nostrils flare, every sense straining with curiosity for Warship's reaction to this disclosure. "And of course, we both know what she has done for the Chamber."
After a moment, I relax my attention, Straia's visage washing from my hide. In her place, a buckskin-toned landscape emerges, a dozen painted figures old and young playing in a field beside a lake in the basin of rolling hills. My family, alive and dead, gathered in one of the many places I consider home: Hyaline. Born and raised in the Jungle, priest in the Chamber, grandfather in Hyaline and later, the Silver Cove; I chuckle.
"Strange, how this land cycles through her many faces," I mutter, half to myself. "Strange, to be back where I stood when I was just finding my legs."