give a little, get a lot
The decision to leave the mainland was not particularly complicated for Nadja. A few days ago it might have been; her child could not have followed her into the sea with his malformed little legs, and the new mother was loathe to abandon her newborn son.
A few days ago she would have stood over him forever, and even now his little body summoned her to stay close. How she wanted to stay close. Just for a little while longer, in case he woke up again, but she knew he would not. As great as her desire was to remain with her son, even greater was her despair at the thought of what he was soon to become. Nadja knew that one day beautiful green life would mark this site, but there was inevitable ugliness to come first, and she knew she could not bear the sight of flies and carrion birds attending the necessary duty of returning her baby to the earth. It was too much. The decision was difficult, but it was not complicated.
Nadja began her trek to the shore. The first few steps were like trying to walk through sticky black tar. It pulled at the short feathering around her hooves and left ugly black stains over her white stockings. It got easier with time, but she would never entirely shake the feeling of that tar pulling on her legs, weighing her down, staining her body. Grass turned to sand, and she imagined leaving hot black hoof prints behind her, but she never turned around to check. Soon she would be enveloped by the waves, the tide pulling her out, the cool water soothing the hot sensation of tar and allowing her to feel chilly and weightless.
The stains in her mind did not wash away.
—
Exhaustion, rather than imaginary tar, weighed down the blue mare’s slender legs when she reached the shore of the crossing and stepped onto the sand again. She wasn’t sure exactly how long she’d been swimming, but when she began the sky had been dark and the stars had glittered on the calmly shifting surface of the sea. The waves had been low, the ocean sleepy, until the sky began to pale and wake everything up. It was a cloudy, cold grey dawn that greeted Nadja at the end of her swim, and a hungry tide she left behind as she trudged into the grass and the chilly shelter of the trees. She was so tired.
Before her, the trees opened up and the island stretched out in a silvery field, tall grasses weighed down with glittering frost. Their blades brushed gently against Nadja’s legs as she stepped into the frosted opening, and she stopped, gazing out across the field. The sea spray was clearing from her nose in the fresh morning air and she no longer smelled only brine. She smelled horses now.
The blue mare’s stomach churned with anxiety. It was a good sign in many ways—safety comes in numbers, after all, and the presence of other horses must mean this place was safe—but the presence of others was a potential danger in itself. She could be encroaching on the territory of a band, and she feared the possibility of being chased off. Nadja turned, and began to walk the perimeter of the field, sticking close to the treeline until she found what she was looking for: a sheltered thicket where she could lie down to rest out of sight. The blue mare was small and non-threatening, but she did not wish to take any chances. She tucked her legs beneath her and curled up on the cold ground, ears swiveling back as her eyelids immediately began to fall. She had a vague thought of gratefulness for her coat color, which blended into the shadows, before falling asleep.
