She can conjure the memory in an instant, remember each explicit detail of how he’d looked, relive every feeling she’d felt in the blink of an eye.
“I want you to be able to tell me anything. Any time.” “I don't want to stay away from you.”
Soaring, soaring, soaring. Crash.
She won’t admit to her own faults, won’t say she wants the very same of him, won’t concede to her overabundant supply of mixed-messages. He doesn’t feel the same way, doesn’t want to – she is sure of this, and that is what matters. He had just told her to say what she meant, and already she knows that she’d asked the wrong question – at least if she was looking for an answer.
Of course she’d brought him here.
She’d just wanted conformation that he’d not stayed only because he was kept.
(It doesn’t occur to Djinni that she’d never even given him a chance to choose whether to stay or go)
The grullo mare turns away, just for a moment. The lake glitters below them in the afternoon sun, reflecting bits of sun into her glassy eyes. Djinni blinks, brushing her grey cheeks with the impossibly long sweep of her lashes. Stillwater is quiet too, and for a moment she hopes that he has disappeared, moved farther into the darkness of the cave. It probably leads to the sea, she thinks idly, now that Pangea has been swept away.
His approach startles her, it is clear from the way she flinches away and looks up at him with startled doe-brown eyes. As his muzzle slides along her shoulder though, she does not continue to shy away. Instead she stands still, even her breath held tightly in her throat. She hears him – her black-tipped ears flick back to catch the words – but she doesn’t answer.
Water is trickling down the cave wall in front of her. It glints in the light, shining one moment than dull another as the trees at the mouth of the cave are buffeted by the spring wind. She wonders how long it will take the water to reach the lake below, and then eventually the sea. A very long time, she thinks.
“What are you really asking?” He says
“Do you love me?” She asks the cave wall. If she turns around she will disappear, Djinni is quite sure of it.