Tangerine
In the middle of the night, I go walking in my sleep
The ghostly quality of the silver woman captivates Tang, causing her to forget her own sorrows, briefly, as she watches the silver mare's face and waits for the words she sees forming.
I didn't love before Him, I was too young.
And Tang finds herself holding her breath once again because it sounds like the start of a story too terrible to relay. She glances to her own daughter, his daughter, wide-eyed and innocent still, who watches them without leaving her place in the shallows.
But Cordis speaks a name, drawing her face back to face her, and Tang knows it is momentous. She had learned the power of words from an early age, her mother was a storyteller, she knew words could hold more power than magic. There is a flicker of curiosity in her eyes, but it is a quiet and sad - a different kind of curiosity than that which had guided her in her impulsive youth.
Spindle.
Those two syllables, the love and the heartbreak behind the name, causes goose bumps to cascade across her skin. She doesn't dare to touch that name with her own tongue. But despite the way the other's breath catches, there is a flicker of hope in her gold and cream breast.
Her statement assures her that there is a way out for some, even if she can’t see it yet.
And suddenly, for the first time in years, Tangerine feels truly homesick. Not for any kingdom in Beqanna, but for the roaming herds of her ancestral home, the endless meadows, the rolling golden hills of the Great Mare's back.
"How can you stay," she sighs with a shake of her head because the way Cordis says the name Tang understands that they are no more, and for her, love had only been the only thing which could anchor her. There is no judgment in her question which comes out sounding almost rhetorical, but the idea of making the return journey to her mother's homeland has already taken root.
She feels a spark she hasn't felt since Carnage called her name six months past.
"This place, I need to clear my head of it." She wants to believe she can run from Him like she has run from all of her other problems.
@[Cordis]