01-19-2016, 06:02 PM
She longs for it too - that fair ending.
Wants, that promise of them together at the end.
But her wants are like their times apart - long, futile, hopeless, and yet - she still has them, those wants to simply lay down beside him at the last, heads close, knees tucked underneath their bodies, his wing across her back, his blackbirds roosting in the branches of the tree above them and like that - they are dead and gone. Let the wind and the world do their work and blow their bodies to dust but let them have this - the end, together.
For now though, it is enough that they are, whatever that may be and it might be as simple as a moment like this in which both of them are old and graying but outside of time and it’s constraints somehow.
Their unions had never been lonely, not after because she had parts of him in their children’s construct - a colt’s height, a filly’s glance, these things told of their sire’s influence more than Clock’s and she never begrudged the fact that not once did he ask about them and not once did she offer to tell him about them. They were not secrets but her time with him was all for him - for them, and that left no room for tales of the foals that always came afterwards, of how she was dutiful as a mother but little more than that, even she could not say - she cared for them and she turned them away from her side at the appropriate age, and she did not hope for their forgiveness if they found her lacking because she believed she had done her part - she bore them, fattened them up on whatever she could (her milk, facts, few stories, whatever they asked for she gave them but sparingly because every ounce of her was saved up for him), and she cast them out. It was only natural.
He has never disappointed her.
He has never been cruel to her.
Even their partings - their long times apart - they are not cruelties but realities meant to be endured and to make their times together all the sweeter. Never has she been so triflingly silly as to feel slighted by him in any manner. Never has she associated him with any wrong in her life - he has always been a right, a rock solid at her shoulder, and never has she thought less of him but always more, and love has a way of doing that - making her funny and blind towards things, making him seem great in ways that maybe he isn’t really but how could he not be? His greatness actually lays in the fact that he loves her - continues to love her old sad self. His love is her salvation and through it - through him - she tastes a little bit of that greatness too.
He mutters sadly about keeping close and she acknowledges this sentiment with a slow nod as he lifts his wing so that she can tuck herself in against him like she always has. These gestures are second nature to them, even down to the rippling of the soft (like old worn velvet) skin of her belly at the touch of his secondary feathers to it, the sensation is akin to that of tickling even if it cajoles no laughter from her - she’s too old for such silliness but some spry part of her thinks how nice it would be to just be silly together but they’ve never been that. Then her mind circles back to the tangent of together - of how he mentioned sticking by one another and there was a certain finality to that, considering that they have never made such a pact before. She tilts her head to the side and looks up at him from where she is tucked so preciously into his side; “We must then,” she agrees, equally as piteous as he is because it means finding a reason to stay beside one another. There is reason enough in their love, in their token bond, but they have always worked best as wanderers that meet and find one another time and time again - that is their sad love story, and how could it possibly work this time?
It must, she reasons, chewing on the thought like a cow chews cud - slow and muddling.
Quite simply, it must.
Clock is resigned and equally resolved - she can give up the most basic and precious part of her nature for him. She can say goodbye to the wandering that her feet have always known and settle down somewhere beside him, as long as he is there, she is old enough, perhaps it is time to hang up the hat of travel. She tells herself it is for his sake - their sake, after all.
Clock starts to say something, swallows, begins again - “Where do you live?”
She has never asked him this, not once.
She asks now for the sake of their fairytale ending that is owed to them.
She thinks of the Dale, once, it was home but that was so long ago!
Now, she thinks only of him and the shadowy thought of death that haunts her old tired brain.
He is home, she realizes, always has been.