07-17-2016, 08:28 PM
"And I looked, and behold a pale horse.
And his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him."
And his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him."
“You are nothing.”
“I am nothing.”
“You are nothing.”
“I am nothing.”
It was a cycle that started with his mother. She was a rather lovely thing that decided to leave the safety of her parents’ herd and try her luck in a field. They all flocked. She was so beautiful, they said: “Come with me, we’ll live happily ever after—” So clever, “you should join us. You’ll climb our ranks and do so well. You’ll make something of yourself.” But she didn’t want to live in a kingdom. She explained that she wanted a simple life, similar to the one her mother and father had lived. Just like their mother and father before them, and so on. She bade the recruiters farewell and focused on the stallions. She chose his father and in doing so, she chose wrong; he raped more in that first year than he would in the years to follow.
Come the following spring, she produced a son.
He didn’t want sons.
He wanted daughters; you see, in his mind daughters meant more daughters. He could ensure a perfectly pure line and wanted to leave no son alive. If he did, that son might grow up big and strong enough to return and challenge him for his land and his ‘belongings.’ She, for whatever reason, was incapable of producing a female child and so many of their sons—’my brothers’—were murdered each spring.
He was never able to secure another mare and both of them grew very old.
She got sick.
Soma was her last.
She died shortly after his birth.
He didn’t kill Soma.
Although, as Soma got older, there was many a time when he wished he had.
With no mares around, he turned his ‘attention’ to his son and Soma suffered a great deal. There is no reason to share the details, he would take them with him to his grave—but in the end, his father got everything he deserved. He suffered, too, and then Soma left his body at the bottom of a ravine to be covered by ice and snow. He doesn’t regret killing the man. It feels like a giant weight has been lifted off his shoulders, like someone breathing life back into his body; the others will not know what was done to him and he thinks, as he nears Beqanna, that he can almost be normal.
Almost.
“You are nothing.”
“I am nothing.”
“You are nothing.”
“I am nothing.”
The Field isn’t as vast as he imagined it to be, nor as busy and hard to navigate as his father made it seem; there appears to be a general ebb and flow that keeps things running as smooth as a stream and for the first few days, Soma watches. He learns. The first thing he notices is how clean and pretty they are. He must look like a savage by comparison. There is still mud and blood splattered across his spotted coat, his thick black mane is matted down to the roots and falls about his neck in dirty dreads; the flies swarm, nibbling at his skin and picking at the thin gash on his shoulder. Soma comes to a halt and carefully considers the stream not so far from him.
He could wash off there, if no one else minds. It might, after all, be someone else’s watering hole—it always belongs to someone, doesn’t it? —and again, for the first few days, he just washes. Itchy and stinky, the flies making him miserable. When no one seems to come back to claim the water, he doesn’t hesitate; he rushes in and splashes around, he rolls and grunts and snorts. He washes away all of the blood and the dirt, the aches and the pain from memories he wished he didn’t have and then he lies there. He lets the water rush past him, lets it cleanse him in a way he doesn’t quite understand but it makes him feel relaxed regardless.
Almost two weeks ago, he killed someone.
It was definitely time he took a bath.
“I am nothing.”
“You are nothing.”
“I am nothing.”
It was a cycle that started with his mother. She was a rather lovely thing that decided to leave the safety of her parents’ herd and try her luck in a field. They all flocked. She was so beautiful, they said: “Come with me, we’ll live happily ever after—” So clever, “you should join us. You’ll climb our ranks and do so well. You’ll make something of yourself.” But she didn’t want to live in a kingdom. She explained that she wanted a simple life, similar to the one her mother and father had lived. Just like their mother and father before them, and so on. She bade the recruiters farewell and focused on the stallions. She chose his father and in doing so, she chose wrong; he raped more in that first year than he would in the years to follow.
Come the following spring, she produced a son.
He didn’t want sons.
He wanted daughters; you see, in his mind daughters meant more daughters. He could ensure a perfectly pure line and wanted to leave no son alive. If he did, that son might grow up big and strong enough to return and challenge him for his land and his ‘belongings.’ She, for whatever reason, was incapable of producing a female child and so many of their sons—’my brothers’—were murdered each spring.
He was never able to secure another mare and both of them grew very old.
She got sick.
Soma was her last.
She died shortly after his birth.
He didn’t kill Soma.
Although, as Soma got older, there was many a time when he wished he had.
With no mares around, he turned his ‘attention’ to his son and Soma suffered a great deal. There is no reason to share the details, he would take them with him to his grave—but in the end, his father got everything he deserved. He suffered, too, and then Soma left his body at the bottom of a ravine to be covered by ice and snow. He doesn’t regret killing the man. It feels like a giant weight has been lifted off his shoulders, like someone breathing life back into his body; the others will not know what was done to him and he thinks, as he nears Beqanna, that he can almost be normal.
Almost.
“You are nothing.”
“I am nothing.”
“You are nothing.”
“I am nothing.”
The Field isn’t as vast as he imagined it to be, nor as busy and hard to navigate as his father made it seem; there appears to be a general ebb and flow that keeps things running as smooth as a stream and for the first few days, Soma watches. He learns. The first thing he notices is how clean and pretty they are. He must look like a savage by comparison. There is still mud and blood splattered across his spotted coat, his thick black mane is matted down to the roots and falls about his neck in dirty dreads; the flies swarm, nibbling at his skin and picking at the thin gash on his shoulder. Soma comes to a halt and carefully considers the stream not so far from him.
He could wash off there, if no one else minds. It might, after all, be someone else’s watering hole—it always belongs to someone, doesn’t it? —and again, for the first few days, he just washes. Itchy and stinky, the flies making him miserable. When no one seems to come back to claim the water, he doesn’t hesitate; he rushes in and splashes around, he rolls and grunts and snorts. He washes away all of the blood and the dirt, the aches and the pain from memories he wished he didn’t have and then he lies there. He lets the water rush past him, lets it cleanse him in a way he doesn’t quite understand but it makes him feel relaxed regardless.
Almost two weeks ago, he killed someone.
It was definitely time he took a bath.
Soma