I'll tell you my sins and you can sharpen your knife
Raven feathers mix between the warzone of her locks, glistening against the dull threads of her ebony hair. The rope-like material tumbles messily to her knees, hanging loosely from the lithe frame of her midnight body. Against the grey of the horizon, she fits in immaculately, though her edges are far smoother than those of the landscape. The incurvature of her head marks her as distinctly Arabian, though the waves in her tangled locks suggest Andalusian as well.
Her nostrils flare, for the scent of horses alights upon them. Long has it been since a soul aside from her mothers' entered her consciousness, and longer still since she has smelt one upon the barren winds of this land. The mountain paths beckoned her as a girl, whispering to her at night as Kotaro slept. The whispering comforted the strange child in those first years alongside her dam. In the dead of night, when she slowed her breathing and listened carefully, she could hear the quiet weeping which floated through the air like ink.
Heavy, dark, frightening.
To begin with, at least.
The girl of the mountains no longer heeded their whispering, for as the moon turned its fourth time, she feels a stab in her stomach that demanded to be obeyed. She can not grasp the word for the feeling; having lived for years amongst the falcons and ravens, snow leopards and sheep, few words came to her silken lips. Had it not been for the delicate art of spying and eavesdropping as a child, Trissy might have known even fewer, leaving her a mute.
The compression of her chest adds to the pain of the stab in her belly as she turns her head away, suddenly unsure. What lays beyond the largest mountain of her wild home are people like herself. Her people. She wonders of their lives and of their tongues that so easily form words. She scrounges for memories of horses besides herself and Kotaro; few are retrieved.
Instinctually, she longs for companionship.
It is the memory of her mother's tears that dissuade her.
And dissuade her they have, for nigh on three years. Her youthful body has known exhaustion and failure. Her stomach has known hunger, and her throat, thirst. Her lungs have known air that is hard to breathe, and air that sends her sprinting up undiscovered mountains. Her knees have known rocks and sharp pebbles intimately, leaving red rivers in their wakes. Her eyes have known beauty in the summer, and death in the winter. Her heart has known freedom, and now, she realises, it knows loneliness.
The clip-clip-cliping of her hooves echo through the gorge. Beneath her skin, the knife twists, and the sky presses less leniently against her ribs, her lungs. With each step, the indescribable need for words, society and companionship swells. When she turns to leave the scents behind, and forget of the civilization just beyond the largest mountain, her instincts explode, and she is racing back, back, back.
Back to Beqanna.
Back to home.
She knows the spread of the land, and her well-worn obsidian hooves do not fail to land away in particular areas with each stride. The small stream splashes at her lean, sinewy underside. As her heart rate quickens, her skin spreads across well-defined ribs, though also across wiry muscle. The mountain creature is small, but she is tough, stringy, hard to chew and digest. Standing only at fourteen hands tall, the wildling is a child in stature, but a beast of survival.
A rugged hoof clips against a rock she has not known before, and she stumbles. She ignores the inconvenience, deeming it normal, acceptable. With each dawn, Mother Nature changes the earth; the irregularity of the rock is nature's way of creativity in small doses. When the inspiration truly dawns upon the Mother, then hurricanes rise up from the dust.
And yet the rocks seem to shift before her very eyes. Soon she no longer races the ravens of the sky, or the minos of the stream, and instead is left to navigate this new land with caution. It is then that she realizes that she has entered Beqanna once again; it is then that her onyx eyes flicker back to her homeland, to the mountains. They whisper goodbyes, and come-back-soons, the trees, however sparse, waving to her solemnly.
Knowing that her era as a child of the wilderness has finally come to an end, she turns back to the land, and begins wandering through it. Her eyes scan the horizon, make love to the great expanse of land and the mountain-free sky. Her hooves caress the long stalks of grass, more lush and green than most places from the mountainland. And as she inhales the horse-polluted air, she finds it easy to breathe.
(Little does Trissy know, she enters a new Beqanna that she truly knows nothing about. Her ignorance of the land is plentiful, and excruciatingly obvious on her feral hide and in her bladed eyes. She does not know, does not know a thing at all except the love of her long dead mothers, and even that has begun to fade. With the smell of the mountains ingrained into her skin, the filly stands, utterly vulnerable in middle of the field, head held high in absolute abandon.)
Her nostrils flare, for the scent of horses alights upon them. Long has it been since a soul aside from her mothers' entered her consciousness, and longer still since she has smelt one upon the barren winds of this land. The mountain paths beckoned her as a girl, whispering to her at night as Kotaro slept. The whispering comforted the strange child in those first years alongside her dam. In the dead of night, when she slowed her breathing and listened carefully, she could hear the quiet weeping which floated through the air like ink.
Heavy, dark, frightening.
To begin with, at least.
The girl of the mountains no longer heeded their whispering, for as the moon turned its fourth time, she feels a stab in her stomach that demanded to be obeyed. She can not grasp the word for the feeling; having lived for years amongst the falcons and ravens, snow leopards and sheep, few words came to her silken lips. Had it not been for the delicate art of spying and eavesdropping as a child, Trissy might have known even fewer, leaving her a mute.
The compression of her chest adds to the pain of the stab in her belly as she turns her head away, suddenly unsure. What lays beyond the largest mountain of her wild home are people like herself. Her people. She wonders of their lives and of their tongues that so easily form words. She scrounges for memories of horses besides herself and Kotaro; few are retrieved.
Instinctually, she longs for companionship.
It is the memory of her mother's tears that dissuade her.
And dissuade her they have, for nigh on three years. Her youthful body has known exhaustion and failure. Her stomach has known hunger, and her throat, thirst. Her lungs have known air that is hard to breathe, and air that sends her sprinting up undiscovered mountains. Her knees have known rocks and sharp pebbles intimately, leaving red rivers in their wakes. Her eyes have known beauty in the summer, and death in the winter. Her heart has known freedom, and now, she realises, it knows loneliness.
The clip-clip-cliping of her hooves echo through the gorge. Beneath her skin, the knife twists, and the sky presses less leniently against her ribs, her lungs. With each step, the indescribable need for words, society and companionship swells. When she turns to leave the scents behind, and forget of the civilization just beyond the largest mountain, her instincts explode, and she is racing back, back, back.
Back to Beqanna.
Back to home.
She knows the spread of the land, and her well-worn obsidian hooves do not fail to land away in particular areas with each stride. The small stream splashes at her lean, sinewy underside. As her heart rate quickens, her skin spreads across well-defined ribs, though also across wiry muscle. The mountain creature is small, but she is tough, stringy, hard to chew and digest. Standing only at fourteen hands tall, the wildling is a child in stature, but a beast of survival.
A rugged hoof clips against a rock she has not known before, and she stumbles. She ignores the inconvenience, deeming it normal, acceptable. With each dawn, Mother Nature changes the earth; the irregularity of the rock is nature's way of creativity in small doses. When the inspiration truly dawns upon the Mother, then hurricanes rise up from the dust.
And yet the rocks seem to shift before her very eyes. Soon she no longer races the ravens of the sky, or the minos of the stream, and instead is left to navigate this new land with caution. It is then that she realizes that she has entered Beqanna once again; it is then that her onyx eyes flicker back to her homeland, to the mountains. They whisper goodbyes, and come-back-soons, the trees, however sparse, waving to her solemnly.
Knowing that her era as a child of the wilderness has finally come to an end, she turns back to the land, and begins wandering through it. Her eyes scan the horizon, make love to the great expanse of land and the mountain-free sky. Her hooves caress the long stalks of grass, more lush and green than most places from the mountainland. And as she inhales the horse-polluted air, she finds it easy to breathe.
(Little does Trissy know, she enters a new Beqanna that she truly knows nothing about. Her ignorance of the land is plentiful, and excruciatingly obvious on her feral hide and in her bladed eyes. She does not know, does not know a thing at all except the love of her long dead mothers, and even that has begun to fade. With the smell of the mountains ingrained into her skin, the filly stands, utterly vulnerable in middle of the field, head held high in absolute abandon.)
Trissy