These chains were cut to fit my broken bones
What a pair they made. Two mad, damaged souls who had risked the wrath of the storm, and for what? To find peace in an ending? Driven to such recklessness in order to feel alive? Whatever it was that led them here, neither of them were alone anymore.
Never again. The Bear and the Tiger had found one another, in the darkest and most desolate of places.
The slender mare listened intently, patiently, as Björn spoke of his father, and Tigerlily’s heart ached for him.
“I’m sorry,” she said again. It was a terrible thing to watch those you loved be driven mad by bitterness, or fear, or grief. She’d witnessed it in her mother, in Dances With Wolves, even felt as if she had been teetering on the edge of self-destruction in those dreadful lonely moments between her uttered warning to Björn and his refusal to leave her. And when the stallion beside her voiced a thought that some might consider harsh, or morbid, deep within her soul, Tigerlily understood. Looking upon a certain tragedy in her life in a different light now, the white and golden mare wondered if it had not been a curse, but a blessing that her child had never breathed. Tigerlily had certainly not been in a good place. She’d been lost all of her life.
But the storm had washed that all away, and she was a new creature, one with a future that she looked to in hope of something better.
With bright eyes, Tigerlily drank in Björn’s talk of the Sisters of Fate, growing ever more fascinated by him, intrigued by his beliefs, and enthralled by the beautiful words he spoke to her. There was so much Tigerlily did not know of the world. Much of it was dark, but here was Björn shining for her like a beacon in the night. Had the Fates been kind to her?
“Not always,” she answered honestly.
“But whatever ill has befallen me in the past, I’d like to believe it led me to you, and for that I will always be thankful.”
The mare is overwhelmed by the emotion in Björn’s voice, feels a trembling and cannot tell whether it is she that trembles, or the great Bear beside her, or if they both tremble together, shaken by the aftermath of the storm, changed forever in their very bones. The golden mare hums gently under her breath as her heart sings at his words.
“The storm has passed,” she murmurs, her voice warm and light.
“It is time for us to go.” And pressing her muzzle to his neck in a gentle kiss, the mare tossed her head in anticipation. Wherever Björn would lead her, Tígrisdýr would follow.
T I G E R L I L Y
the steel is cold; it feels like home.