Jetta

The green waters of the river rolled lazily by. Jetta watched it gurgle and splash around the rocks; she watched as tiny fish swam against the current just to stay in place. Above her, the trees sighed and groaned in the summer breeze. It felt cool against her coat, and she closed her eyes to relish it. She inhaled slowly, focusing on the air travelling into her lungs. Then she emptied her mind and focused on relaxing every muscle in her body. Ears, face, belly, legs. She let her body feel loose and fluid like the river; she let all her tension melt away into nothing.

She had been practicing these grounding exercises for several weeks in an effort to heal her mind. Since her mother's death almost a year ago, she had felt herself slowly crumbling. Dread was a constant companion in her gut, and a full night's sleep rarely graced her with its presence. She missed the days when being alive was bearable. It was hard to force herself up the mountain, but eventually she had managed the climb for the first time since Inka had passed. This was her mother's grave site, and something told her that the key to accepting Inka's death lay here. Hence her meditation.

There is someone here. Her mind, locked away in its box of tranquility, received this message from her ears. The mare reacted slowly, pulling herself unwillingly back into reality, and looked askance at the clearing behind her. No, there were two someones. And one of them she knew. Jetta felt no desire for socialization, but she saw it as a necessary trouble. Isolation was bad for the heart, as she had proven to herself by hiding from the world for the first six months after Inka's passing.

She pasted a smile onto her pale face and approached the mares, making first for Oswin, to whom she offered an affectionate touch. "Sister, how good it is to see you," she crooned, then turned to the slender stranger with an expression of curiosity. "Nice to meet you, I'm Jetta. I hope you don't mind me interrupting; It's been too long since I've seen a friendly face, let alone two."