Flashes of light, glorious arcing crackling forking bolts danced through the sky, sending crashing waves of thunder out into the world as the rain fell down to the earth below. Static charged in the air again as soon as the light faded, sizzling and snapping and building, building, building as the thunder god’s fury rose. The duplicitous, back-stabbing son of a bitch god of the underworld had stolen from him for the last time. His lightning bolts would strike true this time, and finally kill the bastard before he burrowed back into the roots of the tree of life and escaped again.
He gathered up the power of the storm, electricity licking his skin and setting the hairs on his arms standing on end as he felt for his foe, wound up, and let loose a great bolt of lightning. But the son of a bitch dodged at the last instant, and the bolt—shit. It hit the sacred tree instead. Which, thank the…well, the gods, instead of going up in flames or splitting in half or both, only shuddered from the impact. And as the infernal bastard vanished beneath the roots of the tree, a strange something tumbled out of the hollow at its base, sizzling and crackling and throwing off sparks of lightning. Tiny little bolts that danced along its surface with the low rumble of distant thunder.
Well, what the hell?
The thunder god swooped down as the strange something rolled to a stop, watching as it unfolded itself into the shape of a…horse? Well what the hell was he to do with that? A little gangly-legged thing with lightning in his hair and a storm in his eyes, painted the color of the thunderheads that loomed above them. He couldn’t keep a damn horse in the sky. Lightning flashed again, and thunder rolled as he grumbled and hoisted the tiny little thing over his shoulders. “Can’t stay here, kid. I’ll take you someplace a little more…habitable.”
* * *
Static danced along his skin, hair-raising and itchy and delightfully alive. Strong arms held him rough hands stroking his neck and ruffling his sparky silver mane into standing straight up, making a funny rumbling sound come out of his throat. Almost a purr, but with that echoing storm sound in the undertones. And a deep, bass voice murmured in his ear. “Alright, kid. You need a name, I’ve got one for you. Perun. You’ve got the storm inside you, your name should show it. You’ll do okay here, living out your life among others of your own kind. Much less lonely than a life with just a tree for company.”
The words echoed along his spine in that thundering voice as he was set on solid ground again, wobbly baby legs and all. One of those hands rubbed the top of his head, wiggling his ears and spiking his forelock and scritching a particularly itchy spot all at once, and that rumbling thunder purr happened again. “Don’t worry, Rune. Someone will be along soon. You’ll like her, I think. Take care, little spark.” And with nothing more than that, he was alone, with only the rain to stroke his baby fur and murmur comforting nothings in his little ears. Little Perun wandered over to a nice, sturdy, cozy-looking tree, curled up against the trunk, and yawned, drifting to sleep to the sound of distant thunder.
It was impossible to know what had driven her here, impossible to know why she had stayed. Instinct should have bound her to him, to the Desert, to the closest place she had to call home. And yet, impossibly, fear fell like a wedge between them. Night rolled in, unravelling like a velvet blanket, and when it rolled back out, so had Else. If it was fear that tempted her from Caius, from the sun-bleached sand, it was desperation that urged her further; habit that brought her back to where it all began.
And three days later, in the early hours of morning, beneath a sky painted soft with rose and gold, Else gave birth.
--
There was a sliver of a smile on Else’s mouth as she reached down for the millionth time in several days to brush her lips reassuringly against Elanor’s satin skin. The filly hardly seemed to notice, though she bounced her delicate hip against Else’s leg with a quick shake of that scrub brush tail. Else smiled again. Ahead, the sun in the leaves drew moving shapes in the grass, meaningless patterns, and Elanor bounded forward to chase them. The sudden absence of her daughter made Else’s stomach clench and writhe like a dying beast, but she held her tongue, simply picking up the pace to close the distance between them.
They were on their way back to the Desert, back to Caius – and oh, how her chest ached at this. She could feel each emotion like an individual sting. There was fear, uncertainty, and it was bleak and black and full of dread, the dread that comes hand-in-hand with the unknown. But there was also joy, pride, and it burned great ragged holes through the dark. She clung to this.
She caught up to Elanor quickly, tapping her nose softly against the girl’s withers just as thunder rumbled in the distance. Elanor’s whole body seemed to tighten, those tiny muscle clenching beneath her skin as she met Else’s gaze with wide, uncertain eyes. She did this often, sometimes without warning. Each time she did, Else could feel worry blossoming like poison in the pit of her stomach.
Rain fell cool and soft, quickly drenching the pair as Else lead them to the shelter of the tree line. When she glanced over to make sure Elanor was still following, she noticed the child’s face was slack and sleepy, the line of her mouth soft. Whatever had startled her seemed to have passed. If only it were so easy to erase the anxiety bleeding through Else’s thrumming veins.
But suddenly the wind picked up, and it carried to Else a desperately familiar scent that coaxed her instincts into an almost frantic overdrive. A child- new and fresh and achingly sweet. She drew to an uncertain halt, reassured by the way Elanor wove against her legs. For a moment she wondered if it had been a trick of her nerves, her anxieties tainting her imagination. But there, curled unmovingly against the base of a tree, was a child. A colt. Like a doe she watched him, frozen, keeping Elanor close with the soft of her nose, and her ears swiveling on alert.
It took but a moment for her to realize the wrongness of the situation, of an unwatched infant who smelt only of rain and earth. And a moment too long to realize the cold creeping against her skin where Elanor had perched quivering beside her mother just a moment ago. Reaching out with a whiskery mouth no larger than a fist, Elanor drew her lips across his breathing ribcage with those same wide eyes that softened just a moment later. Emboldened by her mother who had come to stand just behind her, she grabbed a tuft of his mane between her teeth and tugged with a delighted smile.
“Hello wake up!” Her voice was bright and chirrupy as she loomed over him with wide blue eyes. Then, with a quiet gasp, “You look just like the sky.”
Perun was lost in the lullaby of rumbling thunder, lightning flashes muted by his eyelids into a flickering nightlight. The raindrops that reached him in the shelter of the great tree fell gently onto his soft, fuzzy coat, cool fingers stroking him as he drifted toward sleep. The rain washed the world clean, nourished life that grew all around him...and reminded him of home. He slept peacefully, the corners of his lips curling up with contentment as the storm's song continued.
A discordant note entered the song, rhythmic rustling, two beats twining around one another that made his little dark ears flick even as he slept, swiveling toward the strangers coming his way. His breath rose and fell, chest expanding and contracting and—ooh! A soft touch to his ribs jolted him to wakefulness, surprise sending a static charge along his skin that made his hair stand on end just as a mouth about the same size as his own grabbed onto his scruffy little mane and tugged.
The touch sent a shock arcing between them, a tiny flash of lightning to echo the sky’s storm song. His eyelids flew open, and wide storm-cloud eyes met clear-sky blue ones as a happy voice greeted him. You look just like the sky! And so did she, soft greys and bright blue eyes like the summer sky peeking through big, fluffy clouds. “You too,” he said, and when he spoke his voice was the quiet patter of the rain gently falling down around them. His silver-grey eyes looked the little girl over with a quiet solemnity and he blinked slowly once, twice, before grinning and clambering to his feet.
“Hiya. I’m Perun. What’s your name?” he asked, before he caught sight of somebody much bigger than the two of them. His eyes widened and he blew out a nervous breath, his ears flicking back and forth uncertainly and his hair standing on end. “Oh! Um. Hello.”
Else watches him carefully, reflexively keeping the left side of her face at an angle that would make it impossible for the rain sodden boy to see the dead muscle and worn-away pockets of twisted flesh where her eye should be. It was enough of a shock for someone who was expecting it, but she wasn’t eager to see a child’s face twist with fear and uncertainty at the utter wrongness. Elanor was different, she had never seemed to notice the difference, but then it was all she had ever known. It was hard to notice a difference when there was nothing to compare it to.
She noticed almost immediately how the boy didn’t flinch beneath the rain, didn’t tremble with the crash of thunder or balk when lightning split the skies with yellow and fuchsia. In fact he didn’t seem particularly concerned at all to have been abandoned in a hollow at the base of a tree. She felt her mouth tighten, anxiety needling at her thoughts. “You shouldn’t be out here.” She told him quietly, clenching and unclenching her jaw, her words muddled by the thick twisted muscle of her mutilated face. “You shouldn’t be out here alone.”
Unlike Perun, or even Elanor for that matter, whose ears were pricked unabashedly forward and her tail wagging impatiently against her hocks, the storm made Else want to crawl inside her skin and hide, it made her want to find Caius that much more. There was so much power, so much strength, and it felt more tangible than the ground beneath her feet. She wondered fleetingly if she had always felt this way, felt this cowed, or if this too had something more to do with the magician and his digging through her brain.
Another crash of thunder drew her closer to the children, and she swore she could feel the remnants rattling her bones until they shuddered and gave out, turning to dust within the leather of her flesh. She blinked. Inhaled. Considered instead the Desert. Caius. She didn’t find and sudden strength, any magical solutions, but it was enough to quell the chatter of her teeth as she drew even closer to both children, noticing at last with a small, smothered gasp the stray strands of static crawling over his skin.
Surprise gave way to shock, which in turn made room for that fear to find new purchase in the treachery of her thoughts. Her single eye swept first to Elanor, who seemed decidedly fine, even delighted, and then up the trunk of the tree as if she expected it to suddenly burst into flames. But it didn’t. For long, impossible seconds, nothing happened. And nothing continued to happen, nothing but the conversation and laughter that seemed to being flowing easily between Elanor and the boy.
She heard a word, a name she realized as she sifted through the content, and held to it fast. “Perun,” she said softly, touching her lips to Elanor’s neck, “we’ll wait with you here until your mother comes back.” She had all but forgotten her effort to hide the wreckage of a face that had never known the flawless beauty of infancy. “You can call me Else.”
She was so excited she thought her chest might explode with the way her heart beat against it. In reality it had only been a few weeks of walking with mother, but it had felt like an entire eternity of skittish boredom. But now, now she had a friend. Maybe mother would make him walk forever too and they could play games and fill the silence and mother wouldn’t be able to follow so closely if there were two of them, right? And maybe he wouldn’t look at her all furrow-browed and concerned every time she thought she saw something that didn’t make sense. Like the world tipping upside down so they were swimming through the clouds instead of trekking through worn dirt paths.
Elanor flinched when the static leapt from his stone skin to hers, not hurt or frightened, but entirely surprised. She hadn’t met anyone on their journey that could do something like this – and she had seen someone who could make plants do whatever he wanted. Some even had stars on their skin. She chanced a quick look at her mother and was pleased to find the quiet mare looking just as equally startled as her daughter. Elanor didn’t like it when she saw something Else hadn’t. She didn’t like the way doubt crept over to eat away at the softness of her expression.
“Woaaaah.” She said looking back at the boy, her ears tipped so far forward they could’ve fallen right off the top of her head. “How did you do that! Can you do it again?” She peered closely at him as though it might be possible for her to learn the same trick so long as she didn’t miss it if it happened again.
He climbs to his feet and she stumbles back quickly to give him room, those achingly blue eyes so wide they seemed to capture the entire sky and storm within them. “My name is Elanor, do you live under that tree?” She introduced herself quickly, excitedly, falling right into the question as though the two thoughts were remotely connected. They weren’t. “I live in the Desert, mom says there’s a lot of sand and sky and that I’ll have friends there.” She broke off abruptly, her young face softening with something much more vulnerable. “My dad is there too. I don’t know him yet but I love him because mom does.” She says this with as much enthusiasm as anything else, but the blue of her eyes darken and the smile tightens, and she feels a nervous pang clenching in her tiny chest.
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