i am the mace, the map, the fall and the high
There is a strange comfort in the sharp, effervescent sting of pain, in the familiar pull of his bones. It has begun to ease, the jagged edges of his armor settling with the flesh it splits. Settling with age. One day it would stop altogether. He wonders if he will miss it. Wonders what will drag him back to reality if not the sharpness of raw skin against bone.
Perhaps that is when he will truly lose himself. Or perhaps that is when he will finally find himself.
These are silly musings of course. For all his grasp on the future, he still cannot predict all the choices that will lead to the as yet empty prophecies spinning around in his head. A hundred - a thousand threads, yet only one will ever come to pass. If he were cleverer, perhaps he could determine the truth better.
Or perhaps not. He has long since learned just how unpredictable equine nature could be. Predicting the unpredictable is an impossible task.
His breath billows in the air around him as he sighs. The early autumn morning is chilly, frost crunching beneath his hooves as he picks his way idly along the edges of the treeline. Leaves hang precariously from branches, edges curled around as though grasping desperately to the life they have left. But green has faded to red and orange and yellow, spelling certain death for that desperate foliage. The trees would survive, but their leaves would be lost to the yearly sacrifice winter demands.
Reave nearly chuckles at the macabre thought, though all that escapes his a soft huff, another breath of billowing white. Optimism demands that one imagine the coming winter is merely an opportunity for rebirth, but Reave has not been feeling particularly optimistic of late. It’s hard when darkness swirls around every edge and answers linger just beyond his far-flung reach.
Turning, hooves drawing to a halt, Reave eyes the river. It rushes cold and violent, as though trying to escape what it knows is coming. But there is no escape. There is never escape, not truly. There is only making the best of what they are given. And Reave is no different from the rest.
He had come here for answers, but he’s no longer certain he will find any waiting for him today.
reave
