PERSEPHONE

Sabran looked up at Evren curiously, with those same dark eyes that had looked at the white-splashed mare so many times before. She tilted her head at the sounds that came from the stranger’s lips, and drank in her scent eagerly as their noses almost brushed together. Evren smelled exotic and confusing as the first horse she had met besides her mother, and yet faintly familiar – like the Forest surrounding them, and a little like Persephone too.

Sabran let out an excited huff, and looked back to her mother, as if for reassurance. Persephone smiled at the exchange, a warmth spreading slowly inside her, like standing directly beneath the sun on a summer’s day.

When she turned her attention back to Evren, her companion merely pressed herself against her. Persephone melted into the touch easily, comforted by her presence. In those few moments, with Evren at her side and Sabran at her feet, the coolness of the evening against her skin, everything was just as it should be. There was no war, there was no anger, and there was no fear. There was only Persephone, and her family.

This feeling, this connection she felt when she was around Evren was not something that dawned on her at once. There was no grand epiphany, no light-bulb moment like she had felt when saw Sabran. Yet, like a seed, sprouting from the soil that had concealed it, it had emerged slowly and tentatively, responding directly to the amount of water and sunlight it was allowed. She could not even attempt to identify the kind of flower, until it had already begun to bloom.

Persephone watched her companion carefully, patient as she seemed to struggle for her words. There was a distinct nervousness about her suddenly, that was not typical of Evren. It was not typical of Persephone, that this anxiety unsettled her own. For just a second, she thought Evren might say something else – the forbidden, unacknowledged thing between them – but she looked away, as if she might have lost her nerve.

For a fraction of a second, Persephone felt disappointed. In the rest of that second, she realised that disappointment was confirmation of something within herself she had not quite been certain of before. Then, in the next second, she realised that it didn’t need to be said – not in those words, at least not right now.

“I’m so proud of you too, Evren.”

Perhaps, in a way, it had already been said.

all of your demons will wither away

mixed, bay varnish roan, 14.3hh