Seasons have come and gone, and still Briseis remains a shadow. Everyone that she has met in Hyaline has been friendly, and for that she is grateful, but it does little to put the rather feral mare at ease. She still preferred the outskirts, traipsing along unpaved paths, letting the hum of the kingdom fall behind her. This was how much of her day was spent; moving, traveling, climbing. From an outside perspective one would simply assume she was either just an incredibly active individual, or just very antisocial. But a Briseis did nothing without reason. The obscure darkness that suffocated her at night was beginning to take its toll. She had thought that finally having a home - or at least, a place that was more of a home than anyplace else - would spurn the nightmares away, but it does not. Her best solution was to physically exhaust herself, in hopes that she would fall into such a deep sleep that not even the terror could touch her.
When she finally beds down for the night, it does not take long for sleep to find her. The darkness of slumber settles over her like a warm embrace, and she is lost in the unfeeling oblivion. But it isn’t long until the obsidian abyss begins to weigh on her, like a boulder had been placed on her chest. The void begins to slip away, and again she is running. Her lungs burn and her legs ache, and when she dares to look behind her to see what it was that was chasing her she cannot make out their shapes. It is no longer grass and pine needles beneath her feet, but instead thick and heavy sand that even further hinders her escape. There is panic bubbling in her throat, her focus only on what was in front of her - the ocean. She can feel the hot, sulfur-scented breath of the beasts on her back, a clawing sensation grabbing at her back legs before she plunges through the waves.
Normally, it is the sensation of drowning that awakens her. She would wake up with a gasping start, staring wide eyed at her surroundings, struggling to grasp her reality. The nightmares seemed to be a suppressed memory of how she had ended up in Beqanna (she remembers blinking the sand from her eyes, standing on water-weary legs, her lungs aching from the inhaled water), but she can never remember what was real and what her mind created.
But this time, she wakes up and she is actually running. Her lungs sting, having been signaling to her that they’d had enough for quite some time now. She is no longer in Hyaline, but instead finds herself racing along the banks of the River. It is still several more minutes before her brain can register that whatever danger she was trying to escape was not real. She slows, a faltering and stumbling pace, until she comes to a stop at the edge of the river. She stands there, sides heaving, several large scratches running the length of her black coat, most likely from when she blindly ran through trees and brush. Leaves and twigs are tangled into her already feral mane, and she thinks her heart rate will never return to normal.
Beneath the cobalt night sky she collapses, breathless and fatigued, and not ready to make the journey back to Hyaline.
briseis.
you’re ripped at every edge but you’re a masterpiece
you’re ripped at every edge but you’re a masterpiece
I wrote this at work so it’s a little scattered but whatever.