It wasn’t until she already started drinking that the old mare realized she was not alone in the darkness. City’s senses have had time to adjust, but still, it is so disorienting to be in such pitch blackness. Fires and random lanterns light what they can, but the shroud is so dark, it almost seems thick. Light comes here to starve and die now. Piles of candles burn and drip from the low tree limbs they’re perched on. She stands out of reach of the dim flicker of firelight, her brittle ankles in the cold running water while she’s bent like a broken crane to have a drink.
He must have heard her old bones creaking, or perhaps smelled the rot of old age on her – whatever it was he sensed, it betrays her. He is right, in a way, but also very wrong. Life has been so kind that she’s sure she does not want it to end. She’s seen much of the darker things, Beqanna is not a gentle place to call home most days and being as old as she is, she’s seen many dreadful things. She lost and loved, though the latter very rarely save for her beloved daughters. She has no desire to let go.
“It has,” she speaks with a tired hiss, her voice hard like stone and barely feminine. “but old age has not been.” She bemoans, tipping one ear back a she steps out of the stream and toward him – not that he can see any detail of what the pale mare is doing. She catches his scent suddenly – he smells of death, but not of that same kind that’s coming for her; no one waits for him with a cloak and scythe. She’s seen it before. “But you do not suffer with such a problem, do you?” she breathes in his smell quietly. She’s not put off by it, or even particularly affected, at least not negatively. The fairies gave the solitary old mare a task long ago – find those with eternal life and learn about it from them, and return. Talking to others is a difficult quest for someone who has no use for anyone’s company.
@[kensley]
He must have heard her old bones creaking, or perhaps smelled the rot of old age on her – whatever it was he sensed, it betrays her. He is right, in a way, but also very wrong. Life has been so kind that she’s sure she does not want it to end. She’s seen much of the darker things, Beqanna is not a gentle place to call home most days and being as old as she is, she’s seen many dreadful things. She lost and loved, though the latter very rarely save for her beloved daughters. She has no desire to let go.
“It has,” she speaks with a tired hiss, her voice hard like stone and barely feminine. “but old age has not been.” She bemoans, tipping one ear back a she steps out of the stream and toward him – not that he can see any detail of what the pale mare is doing. She catches his scent suddenly – he smells of death, but not of that same kind that’s coming for her; no one waits for him with a cloak and scythe. She’s seen it before. “But you do not suffer with such a problem, do you?” she breathes in his smell quietly. She’s not put off by it, or even particularly affected, at least not negatively. The fairies gave the solitary old mare a task long ago – find those with eternal life and learn about it from them, and return. Talking to others is a difficult quest for someone who has no use for anyone’s company.
@[kensley]
