Mystere’s belly had grown larger, bulbous in comparison with her slim toned haunches and shoulders. She still moved gracefully with a natural sway that rocked her unborn foal like the soft lapping waves of a lake against a dinghy. She was wandering, wandering in the dusk, wandering and waiting for the soft starlight to begin it’s nightly embrace, to bless her and her filly. With that thought her dainty muzzle swung round to softly caress her stretched side and she absentmindedly began to hum.
Hush little one, you shall be beside me soon enough...
She turned her attention back to the skies, her silvery eyes sentinels, looking for the first pinprick of light. She felt the heaviness of the night, not the air but the atmosphere. It was ominous of some revelation, she felt, and so she stared ever harder, waiting for the stars.
Ahh...
Her breath rattled as it escaped with the first star’s appearance. Joy coursed through Mystere’s veins, and it only increased as one by one the constellations appeared in all their glory. She had never viewed them from this place before, an abandoned valley, only with the faint musk of horses. Mystere had chosen her viewpoint well, a grassy knoll that projected over the valley itself. The stars felt ever so close, fingers of their light falling like sunbeams and caressing Mystere’s alabaster coat. Still she waited, she felt the stars urgency, their wish to reveal something to her.
Mystere.............Mystere....................Mystere....................
Their soft whisperings reached through time and space, so quiet, so desperate.
Mystere.......... There was a time when all listened to us as you do now, when all admired and praised the stars’ glory and wisdom. But now the horses of Beqanna wonder through lightless darkles time, with none to guide them. They forget us, we who blessed them....................
There was a pause, but Mystere’s ears remained strained forward, as if they would launch off her head, waiting anxiously for more.
But you Mystere, our star child, you remember us. You hear us, listen to us. And so we have blessed you above others Mystere, and more blessings await. Others like you, Mystere, walk the thorny paths of Beqanna. Those who we have chosen, who hear us, or who will. You shall see them set apart from others by our crown of light. Gather these mares Mystere, call them to you, gather them about you and teach them to listen to us.............praise us with them, make Beqanna remember us. We shall guide you, our child.........
They fell silent, but still blinking and winking at Mystere, with encouragement. She stood as a statue, thinking over her task. It filled her with excitement, and already the starlight gathered around her, twinkling sympathetically to her mood. How did she start? Her simple wisdom began as literally as the stars had spoken. She began to call.
But it was not a whinny or a neigh. Firstly she began to hum, a haunting melody that echoed off the valley around her. Her gathered starlight, at her wish, seemed to carry it off, echo it, and it became louder and louder. Mystere could not keep her lips shut any longer, and the humming exploded into a song, the words were ancient, not of Beqanna. But the lyrics and melody seemed to chime and twinkled as the stars did. This was her call. It fanned out in a great proclamation over most of Beqanna, strange tendrils of starlight carrying the sound for Mystere.
Finally she came to the end of the song, the last archaic word escaping and slowly fading. Now Mystere waited on her knoll, a lone white figure in the deserted valley, bathed in starlight, lone bits of it whipping out of the swarm, flying off into the distance like signposts to Mystere’s location.
For once she did not fidget, did not itch to move. She must wait here for her fellow star children. They must come, the stars had decreed it.
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