we dance with the devils
your halo's the color of sinner's portraits
It is hard to miss the high-stepping action of the roan stallion as he presses forward through the snow, and I follow his progress with a faint glimmer of amusement in my dark eyes. I’m not laughing at his predicament, but his struggle through the snow is something that I’ve never experienced myself. If the roan’s example is anything to go by, it’s not something that I ever want to do either. I had grown up in a place where snow has never even threatened to fall, in a place where winter was simply summer, but with more frequent rainfall. I do not dislike the snow – in fact, the rolling white hills remind me gently of the smooth dunes of my childhood – but I do not want it to stay forever.
I smile when he approaches and nod my small head, meeting his green eyes with my own. I have my mother’s eyes, warm and sweet and brown, flecked here and there with gold. In my left eye there is a single sliver of blue, bright and clear against the rest of the dark iris. I notice the mare coming up behind him even as he begins to speak, and as my eyes trash the harsh lines of her scars I barely register what it is the roan stallion is saying. Fortunately the bay mare repeats the name that the stallion had given after offering her own. Finding words is still difficult given that I’ve yet to tear my eyes away from her gruesome scars, but I do manage a smile as I finally meet her gaze.
Shaking my head, I toss my dark forelock away from eyes. The motion does nothing to lessen the dark streaks in my vision, but as they solidify into the figure of a horse I realize that it was not my own hair blurring my vision after all. I do not recognize the stallion, but he pulls my name from the air as swiftly as he’d pulled himself, and it is not hard to guess what he is. I’m not certain how I feel about having my name – my introduction – taken from me, and to be sure that nothing else comes without consent I wish my mind protected from others. I’ve never shielded myself from magicians before and can’t be certain it will work, but I trust that it will be enough for our conversation in the Field.
“He’s right,” I say, gesturing briefly toward Eight as acknowledgement of what he’s said. “My name is Djinni, though I prefer Jin.” I rarely share my full name at all, but the choice of that has been taken from me by the bay stallion from the Valley and there is no use wishing for things already cemented in the past. The silence that falls after that is uncomfortable. I itch to fill it, but I suppose that this is the task of those gathered around me. I am here because I have nowhere else to be, but they must have come to the Field from somewhere else, with conversation with me a goal of their day.
d j i n n i
priam x aseret
current form: smoky grullo tobiano arabian-hybrid mare
