jezi & impa
bay & black blanketed sisters of the peak
Jezibelle had once more returned to the Peak. Each visit she made to the snow-capped mountain happened at odd hours, and while it was not consciously done it had successfully allowed the bay mare to avoid having the difficult conversation with her older sister that she knew she eventually must. It was easy to forget about it when she wandered the communal areas with her brother (something she preferred to spending time with any herd), but in the end it would be better for everybody if Impa was informed of Jezibelle’s intentions to keep company with their brother instead of with her. The last thing either of Kisei’s younger children needed was for Impa to come down off the mountain to hunt them down.
It was rare for Rurisk to leave Jezibelle’s side, but he had never followed her up into the Peak. The buckskin stallion always waited for her at the base of the mountain in a small grove that bordered the Meadow and the Falls. Almost, Jezibelle wished he had come with her this morning, because when she saw the broad black back and high-held head of the Prime Minister standing in the blustering wind, all of her courage fled. Impa was too powerful, too similar to Kisei. She might try to forbid Jezibelle from leaving and the bay mare doubted she would have the strength to defy her half-blind sister openly. She feared, too, that she would become a prisoner on the Peak like Balthazar had been. Jezibelle turned away from her sister in the distance and headed back down the snowy slope. She would try again this evening when it was sufficiently dark, or tomorrow. Maybe.
It was on her way back to her brother that Jezibelle encountered a pale stallion whose scent she recognized as belonging to one of the bachelors who lived in the Lagoon. She had not expected to see one of them outside of the bachelor territory, much less anywhere near the Peak, and when the white-dusted stallion came close to drive her down the mountain the bay mare was too startled to resist. She had assumed no one had taken note of her shadowing her anti-social brother through the Lagoon, but perhaps she had been wrong to think her presence among the bachelors had gone unnoticed— even if she and Rurisk spent more time by themselves than any others. Regardless of what had prompted the theft, Jezibelle had always been a fairly passive horse: the stallion could not have a chosen a more docile mare to take from the Peak.
At least the Lagoon was not unfamiliar to her. Once she was herded across the border and left to her own devices, Jezibelle made her way through the territory to the small grove that she and Rurisk liked to frequent. The two of them liked trees, perhaps because despite how terrible their respective childhoods had been the Forest had been a beautiful home. Jezibelle still looked for sprites in sunbeams, and Rurisk seemed to seek out copses whenever it was his turn to lead them through the Crossing. The bay mare leaned on a skinny tree whose bark had been worn away from the buckskin stallion’s constant leaning and rubbing and looked out over the flat field and tall reeds that marked the bank of one of the many pools of the Lagoon. This area was on the far edge of the territory and frequented only by the blanketed draft horses. Few could be bothered to come out all this way when there was plenty of grazing and watering holes closer to the herd and the rest of the Island’s common areas. Jezibelle kept her tail clamped anyway and settled herself in to wait for Rurisk to come find her. Eventually he would realize she was not coming down the mountain, and when he went looking for her (for she knew Rurisk would, Jezibelle’s wishes be damned) he would smell the other stallion. It would only be a matter of time before he came to the Lagoon.
As morning moved toward afternoon, Jezibelle dozed off. When she woke again the sky was dark, the stars and moon hidden behind a thick layer of clouds. Her neck felt cold despite her heavy winter coat, but when Rurisk snorted again and his hot breath plumed against the cold spot she realized what had pulled her from such a sound sleep. She heaved herself fully upright and turned to nibble at the end of his mane. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I was coming back, I swear I was— someone stopped me. That palomino we’ve seen, the one who looks like his coat is sprinkled with snow, the roan. He brought me here. I didn’t want to come without you but I was afraid to leave once he drove me across the border and I thought it’d be better to wait here.”
Rurisk’s dark eyes remained on her face, but as she spoke his ears slowly pinned while his breathing grew heavier, and his black lips parted to reveal his grass-stained teeth. By the time Jezibelle finished her voice had grown hesitant and she cowered away from the wrath in her brother’s face, even though he had not hurt her since the night they found the dead horse in the Meadow and her Moonwalker had come to find her. There had been some tension between the two of them, sometimes, and there might continue to be the longer they kept one another company, but he had not set hoof or tooth against her since that summer night. Still, she flinched as his breaths came in heavy snorts from nostrils flared to the red. His silent rage was louder to her than any shout.
Her brother turned away from her, his silver scars dulled to gray in the muted half-light of the winter night. I wonder if those are cold. The thought was out of place but it was the only one Jezibelle could focus on as Rurisk walked away, his steps heavy and purposeful and beating a tempo against the packed snow. "Rurisk! Please. Please don’t leave me alone, not here. Not now." Her eyes darted at the shadowy landscape around her and she trembled in place as she watched his gold and white hindquarters disappear into the dark. "No," she whispered.
Panic launched her after him, and she scrambled across the frozen carpet of snow with little grace as she hurried to catch up to her brother. If he meant to go batter the palomino roan bloody, she didn’t care; as long as Rurisk didn’t leave her alone in a territory full of stallions at the height of the breeding season, he could do what he liked.
Someone shouted something up ahead, and all of a sudden Jezibelle collided with Rurisk’s hindquarters. She came to a stop with a wheezy grunt, pulled in some air, and felt her mouth snap shut with a painful clack of her teeth as her brother bucked before she could announce herself. Her head was flung back, her upper body rising with it as she recoiled from the blow, and she considered herself lucky as she felt the wind of her brother’s hooves pass below her chest and on the outside of her left elbow. He hadn’t had the space or power to get a full hind kick out, just enough to warn whoever was behind him to get out of his bubble.
“Rurisk! You asshole, can’t you control yourself for once? Or are you determined to murder everyone in this family, you selfish prick?”
There was no mistaking that voice. Jezibelle came back to earth, head reeling, and focused her eyes on the familiar black horse who stood glaring at their brother as Rurisk turned to nose wetly at Jezibelle’s shoulder. "I’m okay, I’m okay," she reassured him as she braced her front legs and tried to catch her breath. "It’s okay."
“Bullshit,” Impazienza sneered. She was breathing as heavily as Rurisk, her lungs working like a bellows and expelling hate with each exhale as her voice rose steadily into the night. “It’s not okay. Bad enough he took our father away from me— now he’s greedy enough to steal you, too? I’ve had enough of this. You can’t just murder another horse because you feel like it, you stupid fuck, and you can’t run around forcing your sister to spend time with you. Let her go, Rurisk, or I swear to the sun and stars I’ll whip you so hard you’ll wish Kisei had killed you when he had the chance!” Impazienza’s shouting had become something akin to a roar.
Jezibelle stared at her in horror. She had been there, unnoticed and ignored in the shadows when their brother was born, and if Impa had witnessed Rurisk’s birth and the start of their father’s fury she never would have lobbed such a threat at the buckskin stallion. He remembered, he must, subconsciously, Kisei’s attempt to murder him. Jezibelle had not been able to sleep for days after witnessing her sire pick the colt up by his crest and shake her helpless brother about like a dead thing, as if their father were a wolf worrying meat. How must their brother have felt, knowing that the black stallion who’d sired him wanted him dead?
Rurisk launched himself at Impa at the same time their half-blind sister flung herself forward, and the two siblings caught one another by the chest before rising together on their hind legs and battering blindly at one another with vicious front kicks. The thuds of hooves on flesh and Impa’s hisses of pain were punctuated by Rurisk’s breathy exhalations as he tried to use the voice he’d never had. The two draft horses landed on all fours at almost the same time, both with ears pinned, Impa turned halfway around and pivoting to point her hind legs at their brother. Rurisk’s black lips pulled away from his teeth and Impa’s hindquarters bunched as the two prepared to attack again.
Jezibelle couldn’t stand it.
“Stop it! Both of you, stop this!” Heedless of the danger to herself, the bay mare leapt between them. She felt Rurisk’s closed mouth bump against her barrel a moment before Impa’s backward kick hit her solidly in the chest. The black mare bucked a second time and struck Jezibelle in the same place before the lack of retaliation must have alerted her something was different, and she jogged a few paces forward and around to confront Rurisk again only to find her sister standing breathless and weak-kneed before the scarred buckskin stallion.
All Jezibelle could think of as she panted for breath and felt a throbbing pain blossoming out and around her chest was, Rurisk didn’t bite me. He could have and he didn’t. He chose not to.
“Jezibelle! What the hell?” Impa trotted forward and reached to nose at the bay mare’s injured chest. She was rebuffed by Rurisk as the stallion shouldered past Jezibelle and struck the ground in front of Impa, his neck flexed.
“Don’t,” Jezibelle gasped. Every breath felt tight. “Impa. Zienza. Don’t you. ever. strike him. Again.”
“What?”
“Leave Rurisk alone. You leave him alone, and you leave me alone.” Jezibelle lifted her head, eyes narrowed in pain. “Go back to your mountain and sulk about your daddy’s death from the height of your solitary Peak. Rurisk did these Islands a favor, and if you can’t thank him for that then leave him alone. I will never call you sister again.”
Impa had been glowering at Rurisk, but as Jezibelle flung her words down the black mare’s right eye widened in shock. “How can you say that?” she demanded, her whole body grown still.
“How can you tell your own flesh and blood that the father who beat and abused him for two years should have killed him? Kisei tried, you self-centered harpy, and Cecilia stood and watched his attempted murder and said nothing. How can you defend Kisei or his actions against Rurisk? Our brother never deserved that, never deserved any of the hatred he received. It isn’t his fault. Just like it’s not my fault no one ever paid any attention to me, and just like it’s not your fault your father abandoned you without explanation or apology. The only one to blame here is Kisei, and Rurisk took care of him before he could destroy anyone else’s life.” Jezibelle’s panting turned into a hoarse cough at the end of her impassioned speech, and she lowered her head to ease the spreading ache in her body, out of breath and out of words.
Rurisk turned away from Impa to run his nose down Jezibelle’s crest, lipping lightly at his sister’s black mane as she stood on trembling legs in the middle of the Lagoon. Neither sibling witnessed Impa’s mouth tremble as her ears rose and fell, though both heard the mare turn and spring into a heavy gallop as she fled the Lagoon.
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