When she closed her eyes, should could still feel him. His soft cheek against her own, his hot breath on her neck and the tangle of thick, black mane, greasy with sweat in her nose as she breathed him in, pressing himself against her. Even now, with entirely too much time passed since he disappeared, her heart held his intense respect and admiration for her. She would occasionally wake in the dead of night from a dream so vivid it transported her back to the time when he was near; when she joyfully greeted him as he returned from the demanding nature of his work. She always waited, and he always came home—until he did not. And as the intensity of the dream faded, the color once more drained from her world as it did that first night she spent without him, when the air turned stale with the smell of blood and iron.
Despite this, Saudade held onto a feather-light hope that he was still alive, somewhere, and so she kept waiting. When the sun began to fall over the horizon and the clamor of the cavalry came loudly in approach, she lifted her head from whatever idle grazing she could accomplish within the confines of the paddock, her ears forward and her deep brown eyes searching for the familiar shape of his muscular, mahogany frame as the solider led him in. Yet each time resulted only in disappointment; so with a heavy sigh, she turned her back on the gate before ambling slowly to the opposite corner of the pasture.
When all was quiet, sometimes she could hear the ocean—the usual hustle and bustle surrounding the activity of the docks in the distance silenced by the stillness of night. There were no bells to signal ships in mooring, no people yelling their commands loudly at each other—only the soft shush of the waves under the glittering silver moon. She often wondered if perhaps he had simply gone to the ships, as she had seen some of her cohorts do, where they too inevitably were not seen again.
The day she was led down to the docks was a strange one, and as much as she always fussed at her handler when she was pulled from the paddock—lest she miss her beloved’s long-awaited return—she calmed when she realized they were headed toward the ships. Perhaps this meant her hopes were true, and that she might be reunited with her handsome lover once again. She carried this small desire with her as she walked, her hooves clopping steadily along until the cobblestone turned to wood and she found herself crammed into a tiny stall lined alongside several others of varying backgrounds, including a small golden pony who was to be her neighbor. She offered him a kind whicker, glad to see another among the palfreys, and not exclusively soldiers mounts.
The world beneath her eventually grew unsteady, and as the water gently brushed against the wooden hull, she found herself lightly dozing in the comfort of the rocking. That was, until the motions of the ship evolved into something more akin to tossing, and Saudade struggled to keep her footing. She snorted nervously as she slid from one side of the stall to the other, the slippery straw unable to provide a suitable amount of traction. The dapple grey mare did what she could to stay standing until a particularly significant lurch sent the only hanging lantern in space flying, the glass surrounding the orange flame shattering as it crashed into a thin pile of straw that had gone unattended to on the wooden floor.
An orange flickering glow lit up the hold once again and her eyes widened as a smokey haze began to accumulate, her snorts turned to panicked cries. She tossed her head, pawing and kicking the stall as much as she could amongst the bedlam of the storm, her fellow equine passengers following suit—they were trapped, and they were going to die here unless something changed.
With a loud bang and a crack she winced, not expecting to hear hoofbeats upon the wooden floor in succession, but soon, her door flung open to reveal the golden pony. He had somehow unlatched his stall, and managed to do the same to her own. A strange mix of gratitude and fear swirled from within her as she wasted no time in pursuing him, bursting from below deck into another mess of chaos entirely. She fixed her eyes upon him, her trust now implicit as she galloped in his wake, doing her best to block out the din of the squall coupled with the shouting of panicked men as they attempted to right the doomed ship.
Its demise was as inevitable as the leap she took over the rail, done without any thought to what might be waiting for her on the other side. The ocean opened wide and swallowed her whole, her eyes stinging with salt as her dark legged whirled instinctively—the air in her lungs lifting her head above water once again. With a great gasp, she paddled haphazardly away as the mast of the ship cracked and splintered behind her, the unforgiving ocean opening its jaws and gulping it down deep.
To her right and left she saw a few heads of the others who managed to escape similarly bobbing over the waves, but her pony friend was nowhere to be found. Saudade cried out again and again, swimming forward, looking for him until her voice was too raspy and sore to issue any kind of proper call. She was utterly exhausted, but she did not stop paddling on, even as her heart broke all over again.
She swam all night, until the sky turned from velvet purple to the pink light of dawn and the familiar calls of gulls stirred her from her lethargic haze. Suddenly, the promise of land crested the horizon, the stretch of beach before her long and white with potential. With as much energy as she had left, she swam fervently toward salvation, coasting on the waves that rolled gently inland until her hooves found the finely textured sand beneath.
The full weight of the last twenty four hours gathered within her at once and she collapsed into a soaked, grey heap, onto the beach.
SAUDADE
of your trees, on your wings
we are carried to the sea
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