Gabbar
stallion . arabian . bay . 14.3hh . 8
The wind off the water does little to lift the thick heat, but Gabbar has stood long enough in the frigid ocean that his bones have begun to protest from the cold. Still he stands. Still he punishes himself. He’d stay there all night, and the next day too despite risk of chills and fever, save that another horse approaches and calls out to him, jarring the bay stallion from his self-imposed punishment. Gabbar loosens his neck and swings his dished head about to see who it is, and feels his breath catch in his throat.
Shamwari. Son of the mare he was supposed to protect. Son of the strong, stubborn, glacial-by-necessity Evaline, Evaline who’d suffered. Evaline who’d suffered so much she’d wept, in public— he knew her to be cold, he knew her to be private, and for her to show such an emotion and in the presence of so many others had confirmed for Gabbar how despicable her treatment must have been. And now her son splashes through the water to stand beside him, offering a concerned nicker as if Gabbar does not deserve to be beaten bloody right here in the tide for his failures.
His voice grates over the wind, rusty from disuse. “Shamwari,” he greets the stallion by name. Then, for a moment, his mind blanks. All the apologies he knows he should say, and the reasons behind them, flee. His dark eyes are full of despair. He clears his throat.
“That day,” Gabbar begins, then stops and flicks his ears back. He takes a long indrawn breath and holds it for a moment before releasing it in a controlled exhale. “I am sorry. Your mother—” his lips tighten as his throat closes, but he presses on “—she deserved a better protector than me. And you, you deserved a more worthy ally. Someone who would truly do right by your kin.”
His dark eyes lift away from the chestnut stallion. Were he a mare in his culture, such an apology would never leave his mouth. But Gabbar had been raised without pride in himself. The words fall with sincerity from his controlled face: “I have failed you both, inexcusably.” He bows his head and closes his eyes, prepared for a punishment appropriate to his sins. “I will not insult you by asking for mercy.” |