“Gone!” the salt-kissed spectre keened, even as she found herself shored up alongside the kindly stranger, dark as the depths of the ocean, the weight of her solid and unyielding, and more than enough to keep the ailing mare standing. “De half of me is gone.” This gentle murmur came like the calm after the storm, but just as the sea itself, there was a ceaselessness to the enigmatic soul who discovered herself alone upon the shores of a strange land.
No, not alone.
It was though the pale, injured mare waded through waters in her mind, the way she took things in, let them go. She ebbed and flowed like the tide. The question she asked so desperately comes back to her, and she lifted her head, suddenly so tired, her body so much heavier upon the land than it was when she was embraced by the water. Gaze settling on the ruins of the sunken island, she drew in a breath that rattles in her chest, and found the name of it upon her lips. “Cimarron.” Her vision blurred, and she scented fresh salt upon her skin. Saw the things unseen. “Did you ever walk upon dose lost shores?” she asked, believing that the learning of this island called Cimarron would bring her comfort.
“Her be lost to me.” A revelation just for the ears of the shadow that loomed beside her, like a shrouding cloak, or the darkling clouds that rolled along the horizon heralding the fiercest of storms. These had always been the most beautiful in the eye of the half-blind mare. They had not the striking colours of sunsets, nor the gentle hope of dawn, but there was something about distant thunderheads rumbling their brontide tones… The promise of howling winds and driving rains, the blinding flashes splitting of the sky, thunder that echoed in the bones and set one’s heart to trembling with adrenaline. Destruction, yes, but in its wake, a place for something new.
Breath quivered in her lungs.
“Taken from me side. No, not taken,” the mare sagged into her lean companion’s side, strength leaving her for a moment. Even when she regained herself, she stood for a moment as she was, head bowed and face hidden not just by her only wispy frost-white forelock, but veiled by the thin inky veil of the black mare’s mane. “Given, to save me. Given to de sea.” Slowly, she withdrew from the closeness that had been a safety for her, noticing for the first time the throbbing that unfurled across her shoulders; its source a jagged gash passing close to the base of her mane.
“Did you see 'er, comin' back to me?” she beseeched, leaning so as to peer at the mare beside her. “De flash of green upon de horizon, caught in de last light of day filterin’ ‘tween Cimmaron’s teeth?” But even as she watched for the Akhal Teke’s reaction, waited for her answer, the painted Morgan turned aside in acceptance and quiet despair. “Me eyes, dey play tricks. Even chalcedony blue.” And she shook her head until her forelock settled, and she turned to reveal her milky eye. By the wry smile that ghosted across her lips, even she seemed unsure as to whether she was attempting humour or not; for a moment she was the tumbling surf, bathed in sea foam and clouded with sand, not running clear like the water to which she was so drawn.
They were so sad, her eyes. She knew, and there was no hiding. Water washed all things clean, and had a way of revealing that none could escape, not once truly touched. The hidden heart of her was revealed, able to be seen by any who genuinely looked. “What be your name?” she asked of the one who was as a sentinel to her now, a sentinel of the Storm that had brought her here. And once it was given, the pallid mare with bruises blossoming beneath her skin, bowed her head in acquiescence. “Faolain,” she murmured, half-hidden eyes brightening with renewed hope. “I, Charybdis, will follow you to de water.”
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