We moved in synchrony, my chestnut form the comet to her night sky, moving with a solidity of purpose matched solely by soldiers and machines. I felt calm here in the mountains; a fortress of solitude only the wind dared to breach. The crevices between rocks gave the landscape the appearance of some coiled reptile; so long asleep a jungle had grown along its spine. The trees stood in a line before us; a guard of honour.
I sensed rather than saw Katriel falter at my comment; it had been designed to graze the skin; not damage, but reveal what lay beneath. In essence her reaction conveyed more than her words. Blood is rotten… I tossed back my head, mane a gleaming scarlet banner, until my muzzle was at 45 degrees with the heavens and made a harsh sound in the back of my throat. I felt cool, too cool. Like someone had poured molten metal into my veins and let it set, my heart stiffening as all around my body vessels shrivelled like dry twigs. Externally only a sheen of something like sympathy crossed my gaze and I continued walking, the metronome of our hooves marking time as she continued.
Stories intrigued me. My soul opened to them as a flower to the sun and I mapped every detail as though I wanted to recapture the scene exactly. It was not for me to judge…I collected, was obsessed with, knowledge…I was an encyclopedia…not a manual. In everything I did I stroke for perfect understanding. Anything less frazzled and disturbed me, as though a piece of jigsaw were missing. I picked up these clues and curios about places and people, and reconstructed them, engineering a Nova-style web of references and historys, noting patterns, predicting, and testing, trends….often I was more interested in stories than the individuals themselves. In fact nearly always. Perhaps that was my problem.
My response to the brave words she expelled, like pus from an abscess of memories, was gentle. I’d flayed myself too hard and too often not to realise that the spirit, unlike flesh, sometimes needed more than time to heal.
“Katriel blood is blood. A substance, a chemical as any other. For better or worse we share it with the wolves who’d hunt us, the mothers who birth us and the first horses ever to stand hoof on this earth…we cannot assume the mantle of their sins because of this legacy in our bones. A tree may bear glorious fruit one year; rotten insect-ridden carcasses the next, depending on the climate, the depth of rain…its neighbours.” I sighed, a token the wind stole from me, sending my breath to mingle with a thousand others’ and settle, a pocket of humidity, over the face of the sea. “Luciro’s wickedness would seem to extend beyond Incarnate, my daughter. So often I wonder what brought her to destroy her twin. I thought perhaps a kind of madness…my mother killed herself, but now the scene before me changes.”
I pressed my ribcage against Kat’s in a gesture of comfort, heart to heart. I could feel the anguish coming off her body like sea-mist and stepped back at her sudden paralysis, my concerned eyes seeking her face and noting the hypnotic stare. I heard her mumble something and stepped forwards quickly, cobra like, to knock her muzzle. “Katriel!” My voice was sharp, the scratch of a thorn. “What is it?” I asked more softly, stepping round to face her. “Your son?” Understanding sunk into my bones like water spilling into dry soil, collecting, coiling, penetrating. It was like someone had loosed a grenade and my mind was blinking at the explosion.
I did not believe in coincidence. Maybe one, long ago, before I realised all tributaries joined the same course to form a powerful flow that dissected flood plains and carved mountains.
“Our children are BOTH on the islands…,” I looked away across the water, as though either would emerge at any moment. That was what it felt like. I wanted that day to come. Before I could pass judgement on Incarnate however, I needed to find out what had happened to her, and for that I needed Luciro. And then, I nodded, half wearily, at Katriel, we could eradicate him.