The quiet bothers her, so she leaves home.
Not forever, but for a spell. Perhaps even a long stretch. Zosma isn’t sure when she started considering the golden fields of Heaven’s Gates home. She doesn’t know the exact nanosecond when the towering Mother Tree had become more than a simple beacon guiding her movements within the kingdom. She only knows that as she leaves the place, she glances back over her broad shoulder, silently promising that she’ll return.
But the quiet does nothing for her.
It reminds her of the blustery days. The snow had gathered on the wild hills in heaps. It had fallen around her, too, catching in the silver loops and knots of her mane and tail. Beautiful, her mother had said through the tears not yet turned to ice. You’ve always been my beautiful girl. She hadn’t known the darkness striking through her daughter like a bullet, penetrating her thoughts first and guiding her actions later. She couldn’t have seen the violence and blood stirring and pooling in the girl’s mind; she was blind to the fact that Zosma’s innocence was taking the same trajectory as the snow.
She was beautiful still to her mother. And for a time, it was almost enough.
The snow is more hesitant now. It feels feather-light as it falls across her back, making her already white coat even more stark. She walks as the storm gathers, watches as it moves closer and unloads itself on the distant trees. It doesn’t slow her when it begins to gather on the ground. Her pace is only hindered by the sudden lack of visibility. That, and the fact that she doesn’t exactly know where she is going. Due south, she reminds herself, righting feet that were heading too far left. To The Meadow. To the place where she had first entered the famous lands of Beqanna. To the expanse where she had met a man made of glass, had seen every muscle and tendon exposed to the open, sunlight sky. To the new beginning she had made for herself.
She sniffs at the snow-clogged air when she thinks she is close. Just through the last layer of weighed-down trees. The Spanish mare dodges the trees, but instead of the flatland stretching away into the distance, she sees only trees. Trees, and a few horses weaving their way through the dense foliage up ahead. Her heart constricts when she remembers the copse. She remembers his eyes, mostly. The predator-gleam that had sent electric pulses through her, that had told her to run or forfeit your life. Zosma was no runner. She sacrificed a part of her life instead, promised to be good and quiet. She had walked from the thicket lessened.
A shadow passes overhead and the woman presses her eyes together, stifling the instinct to abandon her journey. It is only a crow. She sees when she opens her eyes after a long moment, letting her held breath out from between clenched lips. Her eyes quickly adjust to the darkness, and she feels better for it. The forest is vast and quiet (but not as much as home). She thinks she will find company yet. The ragged mare takes a final, steadying breath and moves further into the woods. Beautiful, she convinces herself as the snow filters through the treetops to cover the limbs and logs. Beautiful, she thinks, as the shadows fill in all around her when day edges closer to night.
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