01-05-2016, 10:28 AM
The sound of his name from her lips draws him back; He had lost himself in thought, in recognition of this half-brother that shares the same blood as he does, and he only knows this because blood calls to blood beneath their skins. But it seems that the painted stallion has left them, and only the rose gray mare and the bay stallion remain, their skins smelling of nature shared and untamed though the scent is somehow sweeter upon her than on him, where it is rough, dry, dusty. She asks a simple question but he thinks his answer might be as convoluted as the whorls of a fossilized shell from an ancient lakebed, when in truth he knows the answer is as simple as her question. “From here,” he says matter of factly, not elaborating on where ‘here’ was exactly but his head makes a broad sweep of a gesture that encompasses the whole of the meadow and that is all he has for her by way of explanation.
Mandan could indulge her further and say that he was from here, even the point of his conception had occurred one unkind autumn moment in this very land. The act had been far from rape but also far from gentle too, from what Scalped had told him, for she kept nothing back from her leggy curious children, especially not the birds and the bees of acts as natural as breeding (to which he is now no longer a stranger but that is for another time and another place). His origin-story began here, in the meadow, like most of them do. He is suddenly curious about her origins - “And what about you? You smell like the earth,” and what more can he say than that really? She smelled like the earth birthed her itself, from between fissured thighs of clay and stone, and to him, it was a heady mixture rich and enticing.
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