more than she ever had in her entire life, petal wishes she could disappear. the shining mare had done so many times, figuratively of course… she had disappeared in the middle of the night from the shores of the prairie several times… she had disappeared as a child into the woods… and then later as an adolescent from the herd of her birth…she had melded into the evening as a forest spirit would, dancing between the starlight and the trees into a perfect nothingness….washing up some hours later on a distant shore. but she could not do that now. in another life she may have been merely a woodland spirit, dancing among the flowers, but she feels the heavy presence of her flesh now.

petal’s small body is frozen, paralyzed by terror, as the the smokey black stallion circles her. her soft gold-ivory skin shivers uncontrollably and the closer he gets the more tense her muscles become. dread wells up in an ugly pool in her stomach. his eyes are an oppressive weight, pressing on her slender ribcage, constricting her very breath while her blue eyes stay wide, rimmed white with fear.

why doesn’t she run? why doesn’t she try to fight? what would she tell her daughters? what would she tell jabari…. she wonders then, in that fraction of a second, if he would even care… maybe she deserves this, she thinks…at some infinitesimal level.

the feeling of his teeth, pressing into the delicate flesh of her neck, near her ears, causes her to cry out softly. she tries to strangle the sound, and it catches in an ugly manner in her throat. as if she had swallowed a rock… but a ghost of it still leaves her soft lips. her eyes well with tears. is this really happening?

she can only follow that sound with a soft, ”no….please don’t” as he speaks to her. the feeling of his warm breath on her skin feels like a knife dragging across the tender flesh.

as time lapses, the sound of his voice blunt in her delicate ears, her eyes become blind, unseeing of the path before her. if she were fast enough perhaps she could out run him, but she is unfamiliar with this terrain…. her voice, it asphyxiates in her throat, unable to call out… what help would come anyway? and she is not strong enough to fight… she has been told this her whole life… and she believed it enough that she does not try. what a terrible thing… to believe you cannot even try.