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It is not the sound of hooves cutting into the earth that rouses her from the mindlessness of being recreated. And it is not the sorrowful cry of gulls swooping low and hungry over her head that rises her nose from her chest. None of the things that should spark interest, or fear, or anything in her, do more than smolder in the hollow pits of her chest.
Behind her there is still the hush, hush, hush of the sea as it coos against the shore. It's that sound that drags her eyes to the horizon, where the sun hangs at noon, because she knows that the hush should be a roar. Something buried rouses in her golden gaze as she turns it to the mares approaching.
Her heart starts to whisper, I remember, I remember..
Aridela lifts to her nose to the golden mare first, touching it as horses and wolves do in a dark wood. She says nothing, only exhales the brine and the desert dust still clinging to the creases of her lips. There is no stardust and winter-wind left there, not anymore. A part of her shatters again at the thought.
The other mare is dark-as-pitch and it sparks another memory, another thought, another prayer thin I remember, I remember.. She turns toward her and counts the scars upon her form like points on a constellation map. The hair along her spine rises towards the sun as she trembles for a reason that has nothing at all to do with fear. An itch scratches a line down her sides as she leans into the space between them. “Perhaps.” She says and the tilt of her head is almost bird-like as she steps backwards into the half moons of her own making.
“I am Aridela.” The pitch of her voice turns both soft and sorrowful all at once, and something about the way the name hangs on her lips seems almost-wrong. She lets her gaze follow the shadow of a gull across the dirt, unwilling perhaps to see the way her name means nothing at all here. And she does not look away from that dark image of flight when she says, “thank you,” for a reason she cannot quite grasp.
She does not ask what the Peak is or where the golden mare is from. But the questions live (perhaps) in the shallow curl of her neck as she looks out towards the horizon where the sea kisses the sky.
* * * * *
nothing can breathe in this space
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