I am the weight this town is never gonna lose; anatomy

[craft]

>I was in the darkness, so darkness I became;

For a long time, she was used to being lost. 
She was lost in places, in people, in her own traitorous mind. Struggling in a churning whirlpool of fury and madness, swirling and drowning, such was her existence for a long time. And even when she recovered - when she drug herself out of that whirlpool, dripping and gasping - she never forgot the feeling, or lost the sense that she was only a misstep or two away from falling back in. These things haunted her, and would manifest, sometimes, when she stumbled.
She is lost now, because she reappeared into this world in a blink. 
She is lost now, because she doesn’t know a thing about the woods around her, the crushing presso of the trees.

She is disoriented, walking this path. She doesn’t know how she got here. Her best guess is that she sleep-walked, that her nightmare was so deep and vivid it stirred her body into movement.
That she doesn’t know this forest is irrelevant. If she walks in a straight line for long enough, she will find somewhere familiar, and then she can orient herself, find her way home. She wonders if the deserts have noted her absence. If they have, they might find her before she finds them, for they will surely send a search party for a missing queen.
Until then, she will walk.

So walk she does, through the woods, trying to focus on her breathing. She will be in the deserts soon enough. She repeats this, again and again, because it is only the promise of the warm, baking sands that keeps her calm.

She sees no one until she does, and when she does, she thinks she is still dreaming, and laughs. Of course! This is all still a dream, the nightmare of her own death bleeding into something else, something more abstract and symbolic (a dark woods, being lost, of course, of course). Strange, that she should dream of her, of all things, but she will take it.
She speeds up to the dark mare, whom she has not seen in years, lighter now, relived in this dream. 
“Ana,” she says, affectionate, “it’s been awhile.”

Craft

[anatomy]

a

n

a

t

o

m

y

i don't feel anything until i smash it up

This she knows: it isn’t a dream.
Everything is too real, too tangible: the crunch of the leaves beneath her hooves, the scratches left behind on her body from the branches and bushes she walks through. The colors of the forest are too vibrant, oranges and reds and yellows; nothing like the muted grays and tans of her afterlife-desert. She stops occasionally to snack on a leaf or a berry, to remember how it feels to taste again.

This she knows: she is alive.
She can feel her heart beating in her chest, her blood pumping. She breathes deeply, in and out, and repeat—the air seems clearer here, crisper.

She knows this, she knows this and yet, when she sees her, catches a glimpse of gold coming towards her—
she isn’t quite as sure.
She looks the same as Ana remembers, like sunshine, and perhaps it is cliché but when she sees her, the rest of the forest fades away.
“Craft,” she says with a soft smile, “it has, hasn’t it?”
She reaches out to her, hesitant, scared that if Ana touches her she might disappear, but she does anyway, touching her muzzle to Craft’s neck, lipping at her golden mane.
“What are we doing here?” she asks softly, green eyes finding Craft’s.

@[craft] pls forgive this phone post

[craft]

I was in the darkness, so darkness I became;

There is no memory of dying.
If it were, this would be easier. Horses died and came back even in her time, although with less frequency. It was rare, but not impossible.
But what Craft has is what seems like a dream – a hazy sunset memory of her impossible son cresting the dunes, eyes bright and orange, a crack of bone. But that dream – that memory – had bled seamlessly into when she awoke in the woods, disoriented.
She wants to quit thinking of it yet she can think of nothing else, a pounding echo of why, why, why in her mind, wanting to know where the deserts is, what’s happened, why she’s here in a place so familiar, yet so strange.

Yet the thought is not so crushing as she looks at Anatomy, a familiar port in this strange storm. It should be stranger still, to see her here, when years have passed since they were last together – but considering all the other strangeness, this is welcome.
The dark mare comes closer, and Craft lets her, falls into her embrace and it’s the first familiar thing she’s felt, her eyes close and she inhales, breathing in the scent of her that reminds her of the deserts.
“I don’t know,” she answers, honest, and here, in the familiar, some of the fear she works so hard to swallow surfaces, “I was dreaming – I think – and then I woke up. I keep looking for the deserts, but…”
Those she had asked had looked at her quizzically, had said where? or, worse, it’s gone. These are answers she refuses to accept, so she keeps asking the question.

Craft

@[anatomy]