04-25-2023, 11:47 PM
The years bleed together for this mare, just as they once had when she lived another life. The yearly cycle, and even the day-night cycle, mattered so little when she was a hunter - she had been built to hunt in shadows but even in daylight she was lethal. Whether she was being kept hungry by a master to fuel her rage, or with the freedom to fill her own belly or satisfy her own boredom.
Now these natural cycles fail to matter to her because there is nothing in her day or her season to break the monotony. Even the changing of the landscape fails to register with her - she adapts, she finds land, and the rest falls away. What does it matter whether she hides within one forest or another, whether the lights float alongside her through the meadow or when she swims far out into the ocean-that-was-land to see if it will pull her under.
When she washes up back on shore, alive and aching, she stays there until something compels her to move.
Thoughts have become easier, days spent eavesdropping on the other inhabitants has tightened her tenuous grasp on language (though she does not know it is rude to listen in where she had not been invited).
Someone told her the lights that orbit her are stars, not the souls of those she murdered (ate), but what do they know?
They are faint now, beneath the grey sky of late autumn as this black mare follows the bank of the river. She is thinking about how she has eaten fish before, out of a strange sense of curiosity, but she did not remember liking the taste even remotely. Were those fish among the souls that floated around her, were any of the deer or lions or wolves? Sometimes she tries to count the lights, to see just how heavy she is supposed to feel, but they move far too much to ever get an accurate count.
She is certain they move faster when she is trying to count them, too.
Behind her trails a rickety thing, sticks and leaves and pieces of things pulled together. She tries not to look at it, not even think about it. She will do anything but acknowledge the makeshift creature that almost, with a curving piece of bark, looks like the monster she used to be.
Now these natural cycles fail to matter to her because there is nothing in her day or her season to break the monotony. Even the changing of the landscape fails to register with her - she adapts, she finds land, and the rest falls away. What does it matter whether she hides within one forest or another, whether the lights float alongside her through the meadow or when she swims far out into the ocean-that-was-land to see if it will pull her under.
When she washes up back on shore, alive and aching, she stays there until something compels her to move.
Thoughts have become easier, days spent eavesdropping on the other inhabitants has tightened her tenuous grasp on language (though she does not know it is rude to listen in where she had not been invited).
Someone told her the lights that orbit her are stars, not the souls of those she murdered (ate), but what do they know?
They are faint now, beneath the grey sky of late autumn as this black mare follows the bank of the river. She is thinking about how she has eaten fish before, out of a strange sense of curiosity, but she did not remember liking the taste even remotely. Were those fish among the souls that floated around her, were any of the deer or lions or wolves? Sometimes she tries to count the lights, to see just how heavy she is supposed to feel, but they move far too much to ever get an accurate count.
She is certain they move faster when she is trying to count them, too.
Behind her trails a rickety thing, sticks and leaves and pieces of things pulled together. She tries not to look at it, not even think about it. She will do anything but acknowledge the makeshift creature that almost, with a curving piece of bark, looks like the monster she used to be.
nostromo