Again Adelheid eyed the draft mare with a mixture of questioning suspicion and growing trust. Very few adults had taken the time to talk with her to actually hear what she had to say. For the most part they had jumped to their own conclusions before they even heard her side of the story, or considered her thoughts on what had happened around her. Her voice was as silent as the spirits her sister had spoken of. She had learned that, like the spirits, she should not speak.
This was different. Different even from when Strack had encouraged her to ‘find her own magic.’ She thought about the difference and her posture slowly started to shift to interest in this adult who seemed to be giving her attention. Quiet attention at that.
Her confusion ran so deep it took the yearling child a while to find the phrases and the words to express it. Something in her told her it was important to ask the right questions and say the right things, otherwise she would not get the answers she really needed. “I am a daughter of the Peak.” She said slowly, almost uncertainly. “They say it is up to the Sisters to keep the Peak strong. Stallions had come into the mountains, when I tried to fight them, and tell the others they were there, my friend got hurt. I thought, since another Daughter of the Peak was hurt, the stallions needed to pay for it.” Ears flicked back briefly. “They walked free.” It was obvious from the look on the young girl’s face she was incredibly displeased by this fact, though there was still a poise to her that spoke of a crackling fire in her heart as opposed to a conflagration. “Stallions here were treated as pets, called ‘trinkets’’. It was a game, they are a prize. Like you win at tag and you can tell your friends you won.” She had never won. “But the prize I had found I wanted to make sure he had his freedom. I wouldn’t want him trapped at the Peak.” The filly was completely unaware that she had begun baring her heart out to a stranger. It felt so good to release her thoughts and hear her voice in her own ears instead of thinking circles in her mind.
“I don’t understand what is real and what is not. My friends and my sister speak of fairies and spirits, but when I try to see, they are not there or they are quiet. Stallions are bad. But the only person who I saw magic with was a stallion, and he was the only one to be kind, he would have been claimed and captured. But the others, the ones who had invaded and hurt Taika… they left with nothing more than harsh words said to them. I am encouraged to explore, and to play. But when I do, I get in trouble by those who had just told me to do so. When I break the rules, I find kindness in strangers for doing the things I had gotten yelled at by family.” Her blue eyes looked back up at Impa, coming out of a trance-like state while she had been speaking. From that gaze the young woman she would become was looking through for the first time, taking her first steps away from scared and confused child she was. “Please help me.” She knew she needed someone, a stranger even, to just give her anything solid to stand on.
Adelheid
Filly : Friesian Mutt : Black Splash : Inka&Valentine |