-Oh my love, don't forsake me; Take what the water gave me-
A passing breeze takes new shape around her, fingers of air pressing against her skin, and she knows instinctively that it must be Canaan. It had never occurred to the pied mare that these circumstances arose from his own power; she’d taken them as happenstance, just a wild, unexplainable quirk of nature that heralded his entrance every time. Now, though, with his lips adding a tangible pressure to her hip she begins to grow thoughtful on the matter. “I’m alright.” Circinae replies, the open-ended question that was her name filled with more than just a single word. Her nose passes over the soft hill of her fetlock, drawing the length of her face and then, with the angle of her head, one broad cheek across the bulge so that she might wipe the remnants of her tears clean.
“Life is more complicated than it ever was before.” She explains, finding it easy to lean against the solid weight of his body when he comes parallel to her shoulder. “I love it - of course I do - but the weight of it all has a tendency to crush even my steely constitution.” Circy sighs, eyeing his troubled face with the twist of her neck. In that glance their unspoken worry is relayed, the acute panic in his gold-flecked eyes as troubling as stormy seas. “Was it good?” She ponders, feeling a sharp pinprick of that old dog jealousy.
“I know you’re immortal.” Is all she says, biting her tongue so that she might gaze once more across the quiet expanse of grass, all the while her thoughts tumbling against each other as she tries to remain steadfast. “I knew it the moment Jah and I came across you in Nerine. You hadn’t changed a bit.”
The pinprick feels like a saber now, plunging through-and-through her heart.
“Lately I’ve noticed the same of Jah. I always wondered … her stories seemed so out of character for someone who looked so young. But being around her, being intimate with her - I know I’m right.” The shifter concludes. “I wanted this, us three, as soon as I felt confirmed by your appearance. My own mortality became a bitter, inevitable curse and selfishly I worried long nights over who would warm your side long after I was gone. Jah-Lilah was the only worthy one in my eyes and when season after season passed but she remained unchanged, I thought the solution was as simple as putting one-and-two together.”
The laugh that bursts free from her lips is anything but pleasant. “But nothing is ever that simple, is it?” She asks with a quavering tone. Gritting her teeth, Circy struggles to quiet the rush of emotion between her warring heart and mind. She pulls away, only to resettle in a manner that allows for her head to rest wantonly into the curve of his gilded neck. “I knew it would be hard at first, probably confusing too,” The pony mare breathes, “and I know I have nothing to fear … but fear comes anyways.”
Whispering, half ashamed to even be thinking it, she says, “I just don’t want to be forgotten before I’m even gone.”
Circinae
