She is concentrating on breathing – inhaling, exhaling. With each exhale, their faces, their eyes begin to fade, pushed out into the cold world, or perhaps, locked back away, saved for another foggy morning.
It was the crunch of hoof against snow-sharpened grass that forced her eyes open; then, a soft greeting. Her heart fluttered deep in her chest as uncertainty flashes against her face. Eyes wide, her first reaction is to slip back into the trees; in fact, her fur ripples, tries to shift to the colors of winter forest, brown and dampened green. With an effort, the little mare forces herself to stay still, though her coat continues to shift (years later and still she cannot fully control the gift bestowed upon her at birth). The stranger then speaks. Simply, she says her name, her home. “Oh,” she begins to say, then stops, unsure.
She tilts her head first left, then right. A thick lock of black – then brown, then black – mane slips down over her eyes, tangled in her lashes. Her own innate shyness had kept the immortal mare from gaining much in the way of conversational skills, leaving her unprepared for a meeting of any sort. So, for a long moment, she simply looks at Vineine, unaware that 'awkward silences' aren't agreeable for most.
Then, shifting from one hoof to the next, she finally blurts out, “Bidelia. I'm Bidelia. I think my mother once lived in the Amazons.” She isn't sure why she said that. She rarely thought of her steel-gray dam, but the mention of the woman-run kingdom had stirred a certain memory. She was all legs and elbows and ears then. It was a hot Spring. Flies buzzed lazily around her head as she looked up, trustingly, at her dam. She struggles to remember what her mother had looked like, but she could remember the feel of old scars against her baby-soft lips and the roughness of an aged voice, like cloth over abradant stone. She had tucked herself up against that war-worn side, eager for another story. 'A new one?' She had squealed, bright eyed. Her dam always spoke of the hot and humid land with a kind of distant longing. She told her of jewel-bright birds, snakes as thick as trees with eyes like glittering stones, plants both dangerous and oh-so-sweet, and women with brilliant minds and battle-won scars. She had once thought they were simply bedtime tales.
She had not thought of those stories in so many years. “Tell me about the Amazons,” she says quietly, “Are there really birds painted like rainbows? Have you seen them?”
Bidelia
You can't go home again