Well I'm scared of what's behind - any.

[clock]

She is a mountain that time chips away at; slowly but surely, she is growing worn around the edges - the jut of her hipbone is arthritic and sharp, the sway in her back deepened, the sag in her belly natural and low. But she has never paid much attention to these things but there was gray in her muzzle back when they first met; Clock was always old, but he delayed time whenever they were together and every second was an eternity to them in which they felt nothing but the strength of their love and the overlap of their bodies and smells. She always came away with a bit of the sky in her eyes after having spent an eternity (only a moment really!) with him, and these small eternities became the sustenance on which she grew fat enough to survive the years that passed without him until eventually she grew sparse and lean and there he was again, dark, godly, and winged like a terrible blessing come down from the skies and when they were together - it always rained, and she always took shelter against his side beneath a great arched wing.

They are one of the great unknown tragic love stories of this land.

It is a story that remains untold except by the beaks of blackbirds calling in the night.

She tries to remember every moment together but her memory fails her.

Clock knows they are not long for this world; time has marked them for death and it creeps behind them in their shadow, cold and knowing. Every so often, she can feel the fingers of it brush down her old spine in a promising caress and she hears a little whisper saying “Soon…” Not all great tragic love stories get the ending they deserve but she can only hope that they do and hope is what she feeds on nowadays - her, lowly, homely Clock, is entirely too hopeful as she once swore to never be again but he is her ruination and now hope is too. She doesn’t hope too much - it will kill her and that is a crueler knife than time ever could be, but her thoughts drift to the small forevers that they’ve known, that sustain them in the parting of ways that always comes up; it is their pattern, their way, their habit to touch and love and leave in the end, that’s just what they do best, mourn and miss and meander off.

The smell of him is strong and maddening, why is it so achingly familiar and fresh in her nostrils like she just rubbed her nose all over his black skin? Hoofbeats sound entirely too close and ghosts don’t make noise like that, so can it be? Clock hopes against all reason and finally looks at him, her heart breaking wide open all over again with love and misery - two very old companions to both of them. His voice fills her ears and more so, the entirety of her body and Clock just floats in the absence of it after he’s finished speaking. “We die,” she says simply enough, with no regret in her voice - they’re old, not immortal, and death is the natural answer to the question of how does it all end? “We’ll be lucky if we go together,” she tells him, maybe a little sadly then, because how often do lovers get to take their last breath with one another? His nose touches her neck, painted and rough, because she was never a soft sleek creature - just solid, smelly (in a good horsey way), and she would always be that for him - solid, there, present.

That’s her gift to him - to be something tangible, like he is a dark gift to her, magical and different, and she hears his brood of blackbirds nearby as they cackle. It is a song that always soothes her, like his great hulking self and she cannot help but lean in towards him, her own nose searching for those dark familiar pockets of his flesh that she knows so well but her lips catch in the oily sheen of his feathers, caressing and soft - the only soft thing about her really.