hold my hand, it's a long way down to the bottom of the river
It is strange, but more and more lately Isle finds herself in the same position as Roan. For years she knew the solitude and loneliness of the meadow and her bordering forests like beloved friend. It was all she knew, and for a good long while it became the only thing she needed. But when war found them and her fragile head was filled with stray thoughts of violence and pain and treachery from the minds of perfect strangers, she had run. She had run and run until sweat slicked her skin so dark that the dapples disappeared, until white rimmed her eyes and pink filled her nose. She had run until she, quite literally, had crashed into the stoic Tundra king basking in his thoughts at the edge of the meadow. There had been something about his stillness, about the century he had lived- though this she did not know, that had kept his thoughts from clamoring into her fledgling mind-reader mind.
It was strange and senseless, but she had loved him at once.
After months of denying the strange truth that seemed to build and build within her chest, Isle finally returned with him to the snow and cold of the Tundra. But she did not take to the weather well, did not grow a thick woolly coat in time for the winter as it seeped in with snow and ice to bury the quiet mountainous kingdom. Even now, though her coat had thickened some, it was nothing compared to the fur of Roan who had lived here her whole life. Most of her heat had been stolen from embraces with her stoic king, until recently. Recently, like Brynmor, Offspring had been absent. It was kingdom duties that pulled him away, solidifying alliances and treaties, building a more solid foundation on which to grow his brotherhood. Isle knew it, and she understood, never once resenting him for the way it affected their strange relationship as she had initially worried she might. In fact she had taken advantage of the absence to hide from him the fullness of her pregnant belly as it swelled daily with their child. She was so uncertain as to how he would feel about being a father, so uncertain he would feel anything at all despite the way he had always been so open with his affections for her.
Doubt was a dangerous thing.
Her eyes alighted on the small bay mare buried like a spot of soft brown against the surrounding white and immediately she trundled forward towards her through the snow. Her progress was decidedly slow with the deep snow piled in random drifts and gullies that sometimes reached up to press cold hands against the thick swell of her belly. But the distance closed between them and she did not bother to announce herself for the way the snow crunched and swished around her, the way the wind would’ve carried her scent on ahead. When she was close enough to touch the mare, she did, with the soft of her whiskered mouth pressed to her dark shoulder in quiet greeting. This closeness had become such a reflex, such an instinct to share heat with strangers in this frozen, unfamiliar world that pressed frostbite like cruel kisses against the bay dapples of a coat that had not thickened in time. She sighs wearily, exhausted from her snowy trek across the Tundra and settles closer still, the curve of her delicate jaw brushing Roan’s shoulder. “I hope you don’t mind the company,” she says quietly, in a so voice impossibly soft, “this place seems extra lonely, lately.” The wind picks up again and her mane rattled noisily against her neck where ice clung to the ends like irregular glass beads. She hunched and exhaled stiffly, cringing until the wind subsided again and let the coarse brown hairs settle back down across her skin. “My name is Isle.”
Isle
