there was something in the water, now that something's in me
i can't go back, but the reeds are growing out of my fingertips
Perhaps it is decades spent beside the healing waterfall (piecework decades, yes, but decades nonetheless) or an innate carelessness buried deep in his bones, but whatever the cause – Texas is not afraid of being hurt. He has spent each evening for the past few years wading through the knee-deep water, knowing that he’ll emerge with sleek black legs free of the scratches and gouges of the day. For a creature as vain as Texas, a life beside the waterfall is advantageous. His smooth brown coat is unmarked by scars, and while there is a bit of grey peppered across his face, the bay stallion does not seem any older than seven or eight. He moves with ease unbecoming of a nearly-two-hundred year old stallion, but his long-legged stride is far from being graceful. Texas has always been lanky, angular, just barely slinging to the edge of attractive and awkward.
With a habit of nightly mending, Texas had not at first noticed the other effects of the waterfall. He had thought the waters were working more quickly – and he was grateful as winter sets in – but had not paid much mind at first. There are other things to worry about; the speed of magic is inconsequential. Only when he realized that the thought of the waterfall wiped away ankle cuts from sawgrass and ease the tension in pulled muscle did he take note. From there he tried more, pressed farther until he was actively injuring himself to test the phenomenon. Each injury faded as soon as he willed it to (though it had taken far longer to mend from his leap down the waterfall than he’d anticipated), and today he had finally decided it was time to test further applications of this new facet of himself.
He is searching for a target, someone who looks vulnerable. Texas has never suffered from a lack of charm, but he’d rather not waste his skills of persuasion on any harder a target than necessary. He sees a bay mare, sway-backed and old, and pegs her as an easy mark. He moves forward, a pleasant greeting on the tip of his tongue, but then she looks up toward the sky and he freezes.
Texas realizes in a single instant that perhaps he not immune to all types of hurt.
He no longer remembers precisely where Lanai had fallen into the pattern of his life, only that she had stood at the head of a path that would have led him down a far different life than the one he has now. It would have been a quiet life, a happy life filled with the laughter of children that he knew the names of, the kind of life that he had given up hope of having when he mourned Believer.
There is time to turn away before she sees him but he feels his hooves are anchored to the earth, and all he can do is stare.
texas
