KENDRY
| He stands in solitude.
Snow drifts down all around him, leaving cold, wet spots across his broad back and haunches and clinging icily to his mane and tail. His fur is thick, the very nature of his draft lineage granting him more than enough meat to keep warm now that winter has come. The pale stallion does not even feel the change in temperature, is no more aware of the way his breath fogs over his own nose than the world seems to be of him. He is a ghost, a specter of a horse, pale and looming and insignificant in the eyes of fate. His heart has abandoned him, for it would not set foot past the boundary of the Lagoon and yet Kendry could not stop himself from moving further into the bachelor territory despite the way each step tore, a little more, the tethers which bound the muscle to him.
It is lost now, somewhere beyond this place. His private little purgatory.
Kendry's eyes are half-open but he sees little with one hind cocked and his mind a thousand miles away, gliding lightly in a place beyond pain. Nothing hurts, here. The snow falls and he stares into the mesmerizing expanse of speedily drifting white and the hours pass unnoticed. He can't recall the last time he was truly asleep, or when last he was fully awake. His life is as tangible to him as his dreams.
Once again, Kendry languishes in the Lagoon.
For a time it is just this: snow and the doldrums, Kendry cocooned in a wet shroud alone in the wet wilds of his home, a part of and apart from the bachelors who share the territory. He fancies he hears them skulking about, shuffling through the underbrush to come poke and prod and mock, but it is only the wind or the creak of a branch as snow piles more heavily on the world. Would that he could be buried by it. A seagull cries, close, and suddenly the smell of salt is sharp at the back of his throat and his front feet feel swollen with cold. Kendry comes to with a start.
He is no longer at rest in a clearing. His hind hooves brace on the cold, packed sand of the beach as he hefts himself away from the frigid water in a clumsy pivot, all his usual energy and grace deflated as he comes to ground again heavily and with a grunt parallel to the water. He's wet nearly to his knees, his feathers soaked and matted around his hocks. No doubt there will be chunks of ice to groom from his long hair later. Another gull cries, this one so close and brimming with pain he startles back, sloshing a third leg into the sweeping tide and eliciting a disgusted snort from the stallion before his attention is snared by the horse crumpled on the beach. Her agony lingers in the air, and the moment his focus touches on it it anchors him mercilessly, recalling to Kendry his own pain and the endless aching days that have preceded this present, days he has been able to ignore up until now.
It brings him to his knees, head bowing so low his lips brush across the gritty beach, ripe with winter brine, his nose bombarded with a resurgence of smell. His blue eyes sting, maybe from the salt spray, maybe not, but he blinks rapidly to clear his vision and sees beyond the slate-gray sky and turbulent navy swirl of the water that the mare is still prone on the beach and not at all a fragment of a dream. The world is vicious in its insistence that he witness it: blood pooling darker than water in a crooked path and clouding the snow-filled air with its sharp copper tang, the tight-throated wailing of the woman cast out of its depths, her dark legs all in disarray and raw from some ill-begotten obstacle on her journey, and her keening, her whole-hearted weeping drags him staggering to his feet, stumbling down the coastline without any more thought than just like that boy, that lost colt— and then he reaches her side and shoves that awful memory away in favor of easing, somehow, the suffering of another.
He lowers his pale muzzle, whickering, to blow a warm breath over her eyelids and melt the snow that's gathered there, taking the opportunity to glance over the wet-gold curves of her body in search of further injuries. Finding none, he asks quietly, "Can you stand?" For she must, if she can, lest winter's chill sink so deeply beneath her hide it leaves no room for the hot blood of life and slows, forever, the heart's beat. He lifts his head to glance about, but sees no one else summoned to the shoreline by her calls. If a bachelor here felt he had any claim to her, the male would keep close; this beach is empty in all directions but for these two, though it may not remain that way for long. Kendry dips his head again to nose gently at her cheek, exhaling another warm breath against her. "Come. Get up," he bids, urgency firming his voice, for what if she is in some way hindered that he cannot see? If she can stand, they may yet find a way to warm her away from the bone-biting winds that blow in from the sea.
|
OF THE LAGOON |
|