Common

No amount of distance seemed enough to put the past behind her.

It followed Kvothe everywhere she went, hugging as tightly to her heels as if it were her shadow. Home was everywhere, even in these unfamiliar surroundings - carried to her ears by the raucous cry of a raven, to her nose by the briny tang of the sea. And by the sight of a single red-orange leaf amidst the branches of an oak whose foliage was otherwise green - a herald of the changes that were soon to come. Autumns in her homeland were beauty that could never be captured in words, though if prompted she would have described the way the colors arrived in stages. First the grasses turned a rich gold, as if they had captured so many of the sun’s rays that they had stolen its hue. Then deep reds as tiny wildflowers blossomed so thickly that in places they formed an endless, fragrant carpet. And then - in the final days of fall, right before they were doomed to wilt - the leaves turned a shade of orange so bright that it burned like embers. A shade that almost exactly matched the color of her coat.

The Friesian mare wondered if that was meant to be prophetic - if she, too, was doomed to wither and die like the leaves that a tree so carelessly discarded. Like she had been discarded. Stretching her long limbs to their utmost, Kvothe ran faster, as if she could flee from the thought. But she could not escape the truth, or the tears that brimmed in her dark eyes. They spilled over to flow freely down her face, on one side turning pink where they mingled with blood from the wound that had laid her cheek open to the bone. A hole to match the one that had been opened in her heart. A hole created by the grasping teeth of one of her own kind. And as much as her cheek hurt, Kvothe knew that the pain from the betrayal was far worse. It would live with her forever, aching long after the torn flesh mended back together and left only a scar to disfigure her - visibly, at least.

As predicted, the pain did improve over the days that followed, though whenever the chestnut mare wept the salt of her tears stung within the still-healing wound. For that reason she learned to trap them within herself, to bury all evidence of her sorrow beneath a serene facade. By the time that she reached the sea, Kvothe even came to believe this lie that she told herself, feeling the first stirrings of joy since… well, ever. After all, was she not finally free to follow her own heart, to take the reins of her own tale? That there was much she could learn in this wide, open world Kvothe did not doubt, and the promise of it served to lighten her heart - though it also whetted her hunger. Not of the literal sense, as the red Friesian had filled her belly with the sparse grasses that grew along the shore, but for knowledge and adventure - and the next chapter in her tale. The waves grasped for her lean figure, as if beckoning her forward.

Kvothe responded willingly.

Was it hours, or days that she drifted? The chestnut mare could not have said for certain; time was different in the gently-rocking cradle of the sea. Here, it felt as if twilight reigned eternal, even when the sun beat down on her auburn back. With nothing but the open stretch of water in every direction that her eyes could see, it was easy for Kvothe to believe that her journey was endless, and harder for her to quell the dark, viscous fear that threatened to fill her with each staccato beat of her heart. But in time her journey did end, with hooves clawing desperately and limbs trembling as they struggled to remember what it was to support her slender-yet-powerful body. For a while the mare rested, blowing harshly through quivering nostrils while strength returned to her weary limbs.

And then, with all the determination of one who had dipped into one of life’s lowest valleys and yet still strove towards the peaks of its joys, Kvothe turned her back on the setting sun and followed the siren’s call of her destiny.