jezi & impa
bay & black blanketed sisters of the peak
Jezibelle felt his breath against her mouth and grew stiff. She wanted, so badly, to reach out and connect with him, but there was no point to it now. He would see how pitiful her existence truly was and turn away from her to follow Impa, to whisper his beautiful words into the black mare’s ears and give her everything she demanded. But, Balthazar, he said, and Jezibelle allowed herself a moment of unadulterated joy that he had not divulged her name for him to her sister. Impazienza had no reason to know he was her Moonwalker. Perhaps there was hope for her yet.
Impa’s eyes had narrowed as she looked at her sister, but once the stallion introduced himself her gaze widened and flickered back to him. No doubt Jezibelle was in one of her moods again. As the stallion continued to speak, however, her ears turned to the side and she pulled her head back a bit. She had never heard anyone speak so deprecatingly about themselves before. Not even Jezibelle was so blunt about how she felt about herself, and Impa realized in the face of Balthazar’s mewling words just how grateful she was for Jezibelle’s subtleties.
She wondered, as his voice dropped and he continued martyring himself in a whisper, if holding the stallion here was really the best idea she had ever had. Maybe his physical deformities had contributed to his whining; she didn’t know, but she also had zero interest in listening to it. Impa turned to lead the two of them up the mountain and looked over her shoulder with turned-back ears as she did not try to hide her impatience.
When Balthazar shifted to put space between them it hurt Jezibelle more deeply than the indifference of both of her parents had, and hollowed her more thoroughly than when she had been assaulted. Whatever hope had flared within her died. Jezibelle stared at him, her dark eyes wide and stark and brimming with pain, and she did not know if he took the blame onto himself because he was already smitten with Impa or if he sought to comfort her by absolving her of any blame. For he was selfless, she knew from what he had told her and from his actions now as he fell in behind her sister without a fight. Whatever the reason, she knew she could not bear to be near him and have to witness him lose interest in her.
“Jezibelle,” Impa said, and her voice was both a rebuke and a command. She ascended the mountain, her black head bobbing as she pulled herself up the slope one step at a time. She did not look back to be sure her sister was following behind Balthazar.
The bay mare let her eyes fall from the black-stippled hindquarters of her sister and land on the faintly dappled body of her Moonwalker. I should not have come, he had said, as if already he found Jezibelle less desirable than Impa. She turned away from the two of them, head hanging past her knees, and tried to make herself small as she hunched down the mountainside. There was no grace in her steps, no rhythm, and each time her hooves touched the ground it jarred her as if she had forgotten she was no longer walking on a flat, stable stretch of land.
Jezibelle fled with all the speed of a turtle, reluctance in every line of her body, her ears pinned and her tail almost tucked under her with how tightly she held herself. It made her bones ache to walk so awkwardly but she welcomed it as she headed to the one place where she knew she would find solace, and the company of another whose misery ran perhaps as deeply as her own.
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