Lanai feels freer somehow; death has changed her but she’s not dead - there is pulse and breath in her yet, but her heart is lighter instead of heavy and rich with all the sorrows she’s carried around for years. She still wishes it would rain but that wish isn’t at the forefront of her mind, as she stares up at the sky still, her eyes brighter than they’ve ever been. The sky is a blue that reminds her of home, even the green of the grass poking up through the snowmelt is a shade familiar to her - not because she’s been here for so long, this land was never (could never) be as familiar to her as the volcanic slopes of her island birthplace. What she feels is almost how she felt back then - in the time before, before everything began and Lanai metamorphosed into the mare she was now, or not quite now but in the time before this new beginning - this immortal flush of life that fills her.
She doesn’t hear the noise around her; hears whales singing in the pale sky-blue waters that she stares at in between the breaks in the clouds and she thinks that she could stay like this forever, stuck in the remembering but Lanai knows better than that. Lanai closes her eyes, face still turned upward, sunstruck - lights dance behind her eyelids from staring at so much brightness for too long and the lights take the shape of a face she once knew well and loved briefly but timelessly. Lanai shakes her head - shakes away the memory of him that rises unbidden in her mind because she is feeling too much and is momentarily freed of all the things she usually carries so heavily upon her shoulders, those old hurts that hang like stones on her back.
The clip-clop of hooves nearby breaks her odd reverie and Lanai turns her head to be met with a ghost, nevermind the fact that his smell assaults her nostrils in a most becoming way that invites up all the old familiarity they’ve shared between them. Lanai’s eyes are still ever-sad but maybe sadder still because she doesn’t think he’s real - surely he’s dead by now? Neither of them were immortal then like they are now, changed by time and magic and all the years apart and it hits her hard - the paths never taken, and why is it that she never fought harder for him to stay? She just let him go… that hurts her most despite the fact that she never stopped loving him.
Ghosts don’t stare like that though…
“Texas?” she calls out to him, unbelieving.
She doesn’t hear the noise around her; hears whales singing in the pale sky-blue waters that she stares at in between the breaks in the clouds and she thinks that she could stay like this forever, stuck in the remembering but Lanai knows better than that. Lanai closes her eyes, face still turned upward, sunstruck - lights dance behind her eyelids from staring at so much brightness for too long and the lights take the shape of a face she once knew well and loved briefly but timelessly. Lanai shakes her head - shakes away the memory of him that rises unbidden in her mind because she is feeling too much and is momentarily freed of all the things she usually carries so heavily upon her shoulders, those old hurts that hang like stones on her back.
The clip-clop of hooves nearby breaks her odd reverie and Lanai turns her head to be met with a ghost, nevermind the fact that his smell assaults her nostrils in a most becoming way that invites up all the old familiarity they’ve shared between them. Lanai’s eyes are still ever-sad but maybe sadder still because she doesn’t think he’s real - surely he’s dead by now? Neither of them were immortal then like they are now, changed by time and magic and all the years apart and it hits her hard - the paths never taken, and why is it that she never fought harder for him to stay? She just let him go… that hurts her most despite the fact that she never stopped loving him.
Ghosts don’t stare like that though…
“Texas?” she calls out to him, unbelieving.