03-22-2016, 07:58 PM
The cold of the river should have shocked him but it hardly registered because of the coldness that sat inside him like a heavy stone. He had disappeared, gone like a bad dream that left a bitter taste in the mouth and he knew there was no way she could forgive him for that, so there was no point to feeling again. His mother had told him to stop being so cruel and to beg for her forgiveness if he really loved her, but his damn pride kept getting in the way and he balked at the idea of going back to the Falls and finding her there. Rumor had already reached him that she was crowned queen as he had known she would always be. Knowing that meant knowing there was no place for him there, he was too wild at heart and too wild in nature to wear those chains for her. He had tried, and failed, and his failure was a wolf that ate at him constantly - all snapping teeth and pain.
He smells her long before he thinks to turn and look for her; it is merely a mare and not the mare that he had hoped it to be, and therefore, he remains carefully aloof and continues to stare into the water, starting to see beyond his reflection to the dark-moving currents below. Mandan thinks that if he ignores her, she’ll just go away but she doesn’t - she does the opposite and calls out to him, and he falls back on old manners that are hard to kill despite how desperate he is to wallow in his aloneness. He could hear the nerves in her voice and does nothing to soothe her as he turns his great horned head towards her. The fact that she was a pretty thing is lost on him - prettiness comes and goes and he has had his share of it, and now there is nothing and he looks on her dispassionately. “Hello,” is all he manages, unable to care how gruff it sounds coming from his throat.
There is a clatter of dirt clods sliding down the riverbank and he swings his head towards the noise, stunned - it is like looking at a ghost, but it is her, bay and pink and as lovely as she has always been from the first moment he looked at her all those long years ago in this same meadow. His mouth gapes open and nothing comes out, words fail him for the first time and as quick as she has come, she is gone again and he’s not sure why. Her wildflower scent finds him, tickles his nostrils and with a powerful push of his haunches, he gives a great leaping effort to leave the river and find the embankment to scramble up it. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs briefly in passing to the black mare before he gives chase to the salmon-pointed bay that flees before him like a ghost, swift and furious in her tears. Mandan can hear her sobbing in her flight and every cry catches at his heart, as he runs after her.
It is only when he has lost sight of her but can still hear her whimpering that he slows, calls her name softly in hopes that she will answer him - “Ygritte…” and there is so much weight in that single word, her name, a tentative offering of all the love he has left in him (which at this point is very little, he doesn’t deserve love and it strikes him like an arrow - he isn’t deserving and never was). And it pierces him, the knowing, that he should just let her go…