jezi & impa
bay & black blanketed sisters of the peak
“Ikari is on the Islands again. Our grandfather,” Impa clarified as she and Jezibelle stood shoulder to shoulder in the dark.
But it wasn’t dark, not really, Jezibelle thought as she stared skyward. The moon was fat and bright and full and the stars twinkled merrily at the edge of its glow. She sighed and closed her eyes as she let her head hang and imagined she could feel the moonlight washing over her eyelids. Her thoughts moved to her Moonwalker, as they so often did, and she shifted her weight to pull away from her older sister— whose every breath brought their barrels together. Impa longed for touch, Jezibelle thought, but the bay blanketed mare was not the horse who would satisfy that need in her sister. Jezibelle did not need touch. She did not desire it, although she did desire to bury her nose in a silver-white mane and trace the haggard face of a certain stallion. A smile crossed her lips.
“I told him about Kisei; how our brother murdered him. How our father must have deserved it,” Impa continued, her voice bitter. She spoke quietly even though the two sisters rested apart from the rest of the herd, as Jezibelle had no interest in their immediate company and Impa seemed dependent on her sister’s presence. “I hate him,” Impa spat. “My life could have been so different if he hadn’t abandoned me. I could have had a herd of my own. A family,” she said, and her voice ached with longing for the impossible.
“There are bigger things afoot than your quarrel with a dead horse,” Jezibelle said, all the usual venom gone from her voice. She spoke thoughtfully, as if distracted— not at all like the mare who used to needle Impa’s patience with vicious attacks on their father’s character. The topic of Kisei had become almost taboo between them: while Impa wavered between utter fury and a depthless despair in regards to their father, Jezibelle staunchly refused to speak well of him at all, and often provoked the black mare’s mood to more intense highs and lows. It had become a thing rarely discussed between them whereas before it had been the only topic of conversation they shared.
Now it sounded as if Jezibelle had dismissed the very thought of Kisei from her mind, as if he and his actions had ceased to matter at all now that he was gone. “He was our father,” Impa said, confused. “He still matters. What he did still matters, to you and to me.”
Jezibelle opened her eyes and turned her ears back as she glared at her sister. The look was so vehement that Impa shied away in case it was followed with a bite— even though Jezibelle had never once set her teeth to Impa’s flesh in any scenario outside of reluctant grooming. “No. It doesn’t. He gave you away, as is customary, when you were old enough to bear foals. He never acknowledged me. But that means nothing compared to what he did to our brother. It is sad that he didn’t treat you with more respect but it isn’t the end of the world and it didn’t make your life lonely and painful— you made your life that way, nursing that grudge like the foals you never had until it got bigger than you, and instead of acting like the Prime Minister of the Peak you waited for your daddy to come groveling to this piece of rock to beg forgiveness for hurting your pride. This isn’t about you, Impazienza, and it stopped being about you a long time ago. You know why Kisei never came to apologize? Because he was too busy beating his son bloody for being mute while you moped around on the Peak and imagined everyone’s lives came to a skidding halt after he sent you away. This isn’t about you.”
It was the longest and most direct speech Jezibelle had ever spoken to Impa, her words filled with so much disdain that the half-blind mare felt as if her sister had struck her with her hooves, and she stood in shocked silence as the bay mare stalked away from her, heading down the mountain. She’d even used Impa’s full name, something she’d never done before. Impa turned her nose down and stared at the rocky earth at her hooves as Jezibelle’s words echoed through her head.
Filled with the heat of her anger and surprised at the sensation, Jezibelle stormed away from her sister (how the tables had turned) and fled down the mountainside. Her breath came harshly through her nostrils and her descent was hurried, though where she intended to go was beyond Jezibelle. She had nowhere to go. Rurisk would not welcome her (if he even still lived at the Lagoon) and she had no wish for the company of strangers.
It seemed appropriate, then, that she should come across her Moonwalker ascending the mountain as she more than half-slid down the steep face, her haunches bunched beneath her and forelegs braced to keep her upright. He was several feet away, on a less perilous slope of the Peak, but his moon-bright hair and steady gait was unmistakable. Jezibelle forced herself to a stop and lifted her hindquarters, stepping awkwardly across the steep ground until the slope evened out to something less steep and she was able to hurry to his side on more or less flat ground.
“Balthazar,” she said, and her skin felt cool again. He looked different. One ear was still missing and his left eye had not gotten any clearer, but his hair and coat did not look as neglected as they once had, nor did his dappled body seem quite as malnourished. He had energy. Jezibelle quailed, wondering if he was different enough now to pose a danger to her, but firmly pushed such thoughts aside. “Moonwalker,” she continued, as much to calm herself as to call his attention to her. Attention she craved instead of rejected, as she did with the mares of the Peak and any horse she had come across before meeting him. Her ears flicked back and then forward, embarrassed or shocked or both, and her eyes did not meet his even though they traced the lines of his beautiful face.
The beat of hooves distracted her and Jezibelle turned her head to witness Impa coming down the mountain. Her sister looked like a storm, the sound of her black mane bouncing against her thick neck similar to the patter of rain against rock and her blanketed hindquarters beaming white against the night like a clump of lightning striking through a cloud. “No,” Jezibelle said, and stepped in front of her Moon to shield him from her sister’s eye with her body.
Impazienza slowed her pace when she saw her sister was not alone, and all thoughts of continuing their earlier conversation fled when she saw how protectively the bay mare stood in front of the stranger, a silver-black stallion who reminded her of Zenith. Impa suddenly couldn’t recall if she had chased her sister to apologize or demand an apology. Jezibelle was full of surprises tonight. A stallion on the Peak was not acceptable— not without Impa’s knowledge of him, not if it was her own sister who sought to hide the shorter male from her. The furtive, angry look Jezibelle shot at her only ignited Impa’s fury. She was hurt over what Jezibelle had said to her, a hurt that turned quickly to anger.
But she was not a politician for nothing, and Impa contained her fury as she came to a halt not more than a horse’s length away from her younger sibling. It was not Zenith who stood behind Jezibelle, but a disfigured horse with a black, dappled coat and that shocking silver-white hair that would forever bring to mind the skinny Akhal-Teke who’d been so verbally vicious toward her. The male was missing an ear. Impa’s nostrils wrinkled briefly, but she noticed that his left eye was as cloudy as her own and stored that bit of information away for herself should the two of them come to blows.
As they would, if he proved to be troublesome to her. Impa would not tolerate an intruder on the Peak, especially not when the safety of the all-mare herd only little ways up the slope might be at stake. “Well. And who is this, Jezibelle? Did you make a friend?” Impa did not try particularly hard to keep from sneering the last word, and though her gaze was on the stallion the tone of her voice was directed entirely at her sister.
Jezibelle flinched.
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