my soul is in the sky
The day was cool, the chill of winter settling over Beqanna, the sky gray but not dreary – no, never dreary, not to her. It doesn’t take long for a mare to find her, all white, a stark contrast to Rae’s sky-dipped edges. There’s a deeper chill that follows the mare, and though Rae knows nothing of Kora, perhaps if she did, she would note the similarities between this mare and the aunt she has never known. An aunt that she does not know exists. Kora, the only one of her family that belongs not to the sky, but the winter cold, to the mountains and the Tundra and Isle. Winter clings to Kora as it does with this mare now, but Rae cannot make the connection with one half missing.
Draconis had done her best, telling the orphaned, infant twins at least of their mother, of the legends that Rhy left behind and the little she had known of Kratos. Though what would a mare of the Amazons have really known of a stallion she’d never seen, other than the lightning storms that the pair had created together? They were perfectly matched in that, but that was all Rae knew of her father. Draconis had painted her mother in near perfection, but Rae was no fool, and no one was a shining as her mother’s legacy. Rae has simply never be gifted the truth of her roots because, to her knowledge, there were none that could give her the stories as they were. Perhaps Draconis had some faults to share, but she’d never had the heart to impart those faults to two gangly little foals.
Rae doesn’t know that there are ways to find the stories though. Kora roams Beqanna once again, and Leander too. Neither of them exist in Rae’s world though – a world that has never consisted of family or friends. In this, her and Annpurna are alike. What is loneliness? The concept has never crossed Rae’s mind, for she has the birds as companions and the sky as her home and needed no more. She could find Kry easily and visit as she wished, and in that, she did not lose her other half, though she never needed him either.
The mare is quiet for a moment, pausing to examine Rae and she itches under the stillness of that gaze. Though Rae too has spent little time with others, she is never still as the winter is still in a snowfall, hushed and quiet. Rae was born as a storm and knows no other way. A smile creases the white mare’s features, this too stiff and unused, and Rae returns the gesture with a smile and a nod, attempting not to seem impatient. She is not, in fact, in any rush at all. The plan is to stay, at least for a while, to find out what it might be like to keep her feet on the ground (figuratively speaking, at least).
“Thank you,” she says, unable to come up with a suitable comment in return other than you are very white, which didn’t seem worth uttering. “Rae,” she offers instead, as if this makes up for her general lack of polite conversation. She too is learning, uncertain, not quite young enough to get away with it but clearly some part of her is simply wild. Her mane stirs, caught in a wind, though there is no discernable breeze. “I was born here, but it’s been a long time since I’ve been back. It’s different.” She tries, not sure what to say to this mare that she doesn’t know, but offering something, anything.
rae