A lone figure washed ashore in the wake of a storm, and long after the tide slipped away from where she lay splay-legged amongst the driftwood and seaweed tangled up about her, the pale mare, patched a dark, rich-red brown down her neck and across her shoulders, lingered in a state of semi-consciousness, refusing to move. Part of her was tempted to wait for the ocean to reclaim her. It already had her heart, and the truth was, she had always been part of the sea, and the sea had always been part of her. The better part, her beloveds had often said. But the mare alone on the beach would never hear those words spoken from soft, salt-damp lips again.
An awareness stirred her from the diaspora of misery she was inclined to give into, and as the ghostly white mare struggled to open her eyes and focus - squinting against the warm cast of light given by the sun hanging low over the horizon, blanketed thinly by the shrouding remnants of the mare’s fierce storm, as soon as she realised how fast approaching dusk was, she pulled herself upright, miraculously oblivious to the toll such sudden movements took upon her beaten body.
She stood on the sand, swaying slightly, and muttering incoherent ramblings under her breath. It was just as well her eyes (the right blue as forget-me-nots while the other, pallid and milky, left much to be desired) were veiled by the damp, wavy tresses of her forelock, for they were glazed over, as if with the fervour of a maddened mind. Transfixed she was, her repose not that of peace but of anxious desperation.
The sun set behind a ridge of stone jutting from the waters, ringed by rocks scattered like the teeth of a sea-wolf, and in its sinking beyond sight, the stormborn mare beheld something that granted her both grief and solace. A great shuddering sob shattered the silence and stillness of the mare, but she did not crumple to the grains beneath her hooves once more. Movement further up the beach drew her attention, and she sprung about-face, ready to meet the interloper encroaching upon her solemn solitude head on.
“You!” she cried, her voice raw from the salt-and-sand she’d swallowed perhaps a little too much of, her words husky with an other-worldliness that she’d brought into the world with her (and would take with her when she left). “Dat island, dere,” she pointed out to sea, stumbling her way across the beach, still paying no head to the bruising of her body, all too aware of the much bloodier battering her heart had undergone. “De one reclaimed by de sea ‘erself, name ‘im to me.” And closer she staggered, flailing and almost stumbling bodily into her unwitting companion and witness to what seemed at face value as little more than lunacy. “Name ‘im!” And perhaps it was mania that afflicted her in that moment. After all, such a trauma as nearly losing one’s life after losing all that one lived for was enough to send the most hardened of hearts mad.
|
