“For all evils there are two remedies - time and silence.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
Salty seawater entered his nares and they flared now as the sweat laden galleon walked the land bridge that only made itself known when the tides fled. The waters still touched against his large hooves, the weight of his frame imprinting clean prints into the sand where they were quickly glazed by the lull of the ocean. The sun was high now, gulls and other sorts of birds made noises in the sky above, some returning to their nests in the rocks with carrion for their families. The bay black sahib seemed oblivious to all the life teeming around him as he walked with a sort of solemn reverence…leaving the land of the seasons and all he had once known and making way towards the islands with all their wonder and all things unknown to him yet. The islands were always a place his mother often told him about when he was a child, the place she called her home, where the lands did not belong to the inhabitants but the inhabitants to the land. She had told him that he could find peace there…he might have taken her advice all those years ago…if he had not been so blind and foolish.
His dark eyes lifted now as he paused for a moment to look back. The winds came and caressed his face, cooling his drenched skin, and it seemed gently encouraging him to proceed forth. All he had known was now in the past. Could he be sure the same fallacies would not also be found here? He remained there fixed looking back, until he turned forward but remained where he stood, now questioning his destination these last twenty seven days and twenty eight nights.
◊◊◊
Rodrigo had dwelled alone these last seasons, and he had entered darkness and solitude so that his heart became bitter and sour at once. One day he chanced to cross paths with a small child, a filly in the fields. The little creature was distressed for her mother had left her to hiding and had taken off. She had not returned since the previous day's afternoon. Rodrigo was stirred with pity, the first of emotions that he had felt in some time and he resolved to help the young one find her mother. Find her, he did by the week's end, the mare had been beaten by marauders. He remained with the pair until the mother found healing enough to travel. She had lost her vision in one eye and was near blind in the other, and she would forever move with a limp in her stride.
"Kindness is a rarity in these parts stranger…why do you help us?"
He had been pondering the question a long time, wondering if the mother and daughter pair mattered at all and why. "It is…the right thing to do." At this Rodrigo remembered the stallion he was then, the stallion he still was despite all that had happened, and despite himself and for the first time in a long time…the Spaniard smiled. The mare had laughed and asked no more of him. They did not converse much but the daughter had become quite fond of him whom she called Spaniard. They began to travel with Rodrigo escorting them back to their herd. He stayed there among them for seven days. On the seventh, a band of rogues appeared demanding mares…the same ones who had mistreated the filly's dam. Insults were thrown his way, taunting made, but Rodrigo stayed silent and steady demanding that the vagabonds depart. The dispute ended violently, a dead stallion on the ground alongside another and another. He left the third to the inhabitants and walked off without so much as a word. There was blood on his maw, a fresh scar on his shoulder and bite marks on his neck but he was otherwise intact.
"Where will you go?" a little voice asked.
"To fulfill a promise I made to someone."
"Will we ever see you again?"
Silence. "Take care of your mother."
◊◊◊
The salt water still stung at the healing wound which had reopened some days ago as he pushed through dense forest. I am the same, though not the same, he thought to himself as he snorted sharply and continued onward.
Today Rodrigo found himself beside the crash of waterfalls, the waters were sweet refreshment to his tired soul. He had survived his first night by the shore, today he would make good on trekking deeper into the lithe. Waters poured over his face, staining his skin and dampening his forelock and mane as he dipped down for a drink. Motioning to the bank he shook his hearty frame and took a moment to scan the lithe. Through the mist and among the foliage, he spied a sizeable stallion and another equine. Making way over, he later confirmed the other to be a mare. Hints of red flickered in the daylight among his midnight locks. Water-stained skin shimmered a darker brown, black almost around his neck, down his legs and some of his face. The pair were stockier in breeding and from where he approached, Rodrigo knew he was lacking in height compared to the other steed. This did not deter or vex him in the least bit. He smiled now (it was becoming easier to smile again) as he neared. "Greetings," he said softly. His voice was almost a whisper, a smooth and warm masculine chorus that seemed sweet as vine's fruit. The Spaniard remained a courteous distance away, thorns pricked as he eyed them curiously. The pair seemed so at peace, he somewhat regretted having disturbed them.
"I don't mean to intrude Sir, Miss. I am new to these parts. I am seeking the place where Peace Roses grow. Do you know of it?" There was a foreign accent in his words, though he used the formalities he had learned serving the country he once called his home. The virile waited to see how those who called the islands home dealt with strangers.
RODRIGO
the spaniard |