So easily does she fall back on her previous instincts, and she feels him even though she cannot see him. It is the sound of footsteps, soft and quiet but somehow incredibly loud despite the crackle of fire and the drumming of the rain. She hears them, and it’s almost too quickly that her head lifts and snaps in his direction, those currently sightless, endlessly dark eyes uselessly searching for him. He is a stranger, and his presence with her small newborn brings a sudden elevation of her heartbeat.
But then, there are his shadows.
Anyone else may not have felt that almost intangible feeling of darkness when it wraps like a noose around her neck, but she is no stranger to being ensnared by such things. She feels that featherlight, barely there, whisper of a touch against her skin and her breathing stills, but her heart doesn’t. It beats faster, as it always does when in the presence of something that evokes fear and anticipation, heightened by her inability to see. For just a fleeting moment, she forgets the sound of destruction that roars around her, staring in the direction of the unknown stallion as though somehow if she looked hard enough her vision would return. But the sound of Aislyn continuing her quest to stand, and the insistent crackle and hiss of the fire as it consumes the nearby brush rips her from her twisted reverie.
Almost roughly, she pushes the small filly upwards, unable to see the way the little girl flattens her ears in protest to her mother’s aggressive behavior. But stubbornly, Aislyn manages to get her minutes-old legs underneath her, and though she wavers unsteadily she finds her balance when Ryatah catches her with her nose. She hardly has time to relish her success before her mother is urging her forward, away from the heat and further into the forest. She tries to steal glances back at the man following them, her vibrantly pink eyes searching for him through the shadow and smoke, but every time she begins to slow, Ryatah presses her on.
When they break the barrier between Tephra and Taiga, it is like stumbling into another world. The shadow cloak that Litotes had blanketed Tephra in dissipates, and the smoke thins and fades away. But most surprisingly is the startling light of being able to see again – something that Ryatah is all too familiar with, and yet it catches her off guard every time just the same. She blinks in confusion at the harshness of the sun, even though it is muted by the tops of the trees, and even though the air is fresher, she doesn’t stop moving.
It is only once she is certain they have outran the danger that the pale mare turns, and this time when she looks for him, she sees him. Disheveled and wild, her almost black eyes seem to smolder when set against the stark white of her face, watching him with an unabashed curiosity. He seems to glisten in the dappled light that filters through the trees, and it doesn’t occur to her to be ashamed of her own appearance. Her usually smooth, porcelain-like skin is smattered with mud and rain and sweat, and her mane falls in ropey tangles along the curve of her neck. But the delicate lines and angles of her face maintain their elegance even in her feral-looking state, and when she speaks to him her voice is quiet and lilting despite the rawness from the smoke that choked her moments ago, “Who are you?”
Aislyn has tucked herself into her mother’s side, her black and white mottled coat a startling contrast against Ryatah’s white, as she stares wide-eyed up at the stallion. The confusion on her face was evident; she had been born into a burning world, and wherever they were now seemed so quiet that it was almost unsettling. And the man that was here, she still isn’t sure how he fits into her world, or if he even fits at all. All she knows is that her mother hasn’t stopped staring at him, with suspicion and curiosity reflecting in her dark eyes, and it made Aislyn press all the closer to her.
