Simple was his answer. Her amber-brown eyes didn’t dare leave him. She could detect no haunting sadness; see no tears shining in his eyes. She heard no cruel, sharp edge to his tone, nor did his muscles tense or ears turn back. He did not smile wide; his voice did not lift in welcome jubilance. He appeared not sad, not angry, not happy… but what? Puzzling was his second response, and Avangeline considered asking him to elaborate, but paused. Perhaps he was like she was, but where she worshipped a goddess who raised the sun; he may worship a deity who raised the moon. They’d been lovers of shadows and all things dark back home, she remembered, and she’d never crossed paths with the one who delivered nightfall.
Avangeline dismissed the thought, the hope that she’d finally crossed paths with someone who could identify with what she missed. She’d only told one individual what she’d lost… only one. She did not see herself growing to trust anyone as greatly as she had Bjorn and, therefore, decided she would not say anything to raise suspicion. They’d think her mad, surely. She’d met no one yet that could speak of walking among deities, or even worshipping any basis of religion; she’d met no one who’d made any mention of horses that could fly with wings like birds.
Attention returning to him as he questioned her, Avangeline paused before she spoke. It was not and had never been in her to lie (she’d done so once, to protect Al-Hattaal, or so she believed she was doing). She could avoid truths that she didn’t wish to discuss, namely being her heritage and what she had lost when she’d awoken on Crossing Island two and a half years ago. What could she tell this stallion, this individual whose story she couldn’t quite piece together?
“You’re right, I don’t.” She said, and turned her long, slender face from him, watching the tumble of the waterfall and thinking how whole she felt when the sun was high, glittering off the sheen of her dark gold coat. In the light she was born and in the light she would always belong.
“I’ve lost my friends.” She said, and tried to keep her throat from tightening, tried to keep more emotion from pouring into the confession. Briefly it flickered across her face, illuminated as it was by the moon’s luminescent glow. Her chin dipped, just a fraction of an inch, and her gaze dropped with it. No longer did she watch the waterfall… she didn’t watch anything, really. Her gaze appeared disconnected, lost in the imagined visions of previous memories. “I’m alone.”
A smart mare would not make such a confession to a lone stallion. Avangeline may have been wise in some ways, but in mistrusting strangers she was not.
“There are places I could go,” she said, thinking of the Vulcans at the Peak, “but I’m afraid I’ll miss them if they return.”
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