how much heartache can we take?
The shadows are much darker here, colder. The way they wrap themselves like enticing tendrils, wanton against me, like gnarled fingers hooking into all my cracks and crevasses, whispering promises to take my broken parts and make them whole, the darkness always finds a way to seep into the gaps, filling my core with a coldness, a doubt that seems to stretch over my bones, close like skin. My hazel eyes, they star out, up into the distance of the tree spires. I'm strewn across the loam, beneath the splintered bark and conifers. Gorse and brambles knot my mane, my tail. I stay silent for a moment, listening to the gentle autumn breeze, lull, whispering in the treetops.
It's happening again. I stir, I wake. Knee knocking into oneanother as I rise, transitively at first, so flinty hooves break the soil and I emerge from the shadows a chocolate form, silvery tresses falling in knots over my hollow eyes. I have found the field, again. Woken in the confines of the terrain, with no memory of how I had gotten here. The nightmares, they take me places, the shadows, they drive me out of the safety of the Gates, to make me fall victim, to make me weak, weaker even.
My pace is a dawdle, each hoof stepping in a mechanical rhythm. Not breaking the cadence that breaks the myriad of browns and oranges at my feet. I wander the outskirts, silvery tail whipping at my hocks. My thin frame was no loner emaciated, but still holds the scars, always the scars. Even Jason's magic could not take away the taint of the memory, the haunting of the scars. If only I could try, try and find out why, why the shadows chase me, why the nightmares unleash the beasts within. I even feel them now, claws and talons scratching at those closed doors. If only I could find the way to open them.
Hollowed eyes, walnuts and pecan, glass-like, like the reflections of the river in the height of the sun's light. They find the stranger first, and then my ears flicker, listening. The sound of her breathing, it fills me with a new feeling. The gentle beat of a heart caged within, it thrums against me, like my own thuds, thuds against my ribs. The feeling, the rhythm, it pushes me on and on, until I stand just before her. 'Hello.' my tongue feels stuck against the roof of my mouth, swollen with the urge for words, but like the caw of the birds in the trees, they, and I, fall silent.
There is a delicate whimsy, in the way my head sways, my body like a leaf, lost in the autumn breeze. I bend, I break. My chocolate skin, mottled with burrs, twitches against the flies, as I pull my gaze from the strange mare to the direction of the Gates. Home. Home, where it is safe, safe. 'Ghosts wander. In search of lost things, in search of home. Home. Are you looking for a home?'
Ghosts. They chase me, haunt me, over and over. And yet I am drawn to them like moth to flame. The twist of a smile pulls at my lips, curt, cruel almost in the way that teeth and flesh declare what is meant to be a gentle offering. I soon decide against it, and remain a mask of indifference. Watching the pallid mare with a curious eye, and a throbbing tongue.
R E U E N
little broken girl of the gates