Posted on January 23, 2021 at 04:43:55 AM by Nzingha
hapo ambao asaa  She had lost. She was lost. The shaman blinked furiously, though the gesture did nothing to clear the darkness from her vision. For years she’d flirted with the shadows that pervaded these islands and they’d finally caught up with her. They had swallowed her, just as the sea swallowed the sun each night. A tremor shook the blank black canvas of the mare’s coat, and her dark eyes fell closed again. Nzingha had left the Shore behind her weeks ago, but she could still see it - desolate and foreboding in the absence of its Warrior-Queen - in the memories that surfaced whenever she slept. It was bittersweet to know that it was she who had brought such ruin upon her old home. The child…spirits, the child...I failed them all… It might have been seconds or hours later that the skull-faced Marwari’s eyes snapped open again, gleaming almost feverishly from within the dark pool that surrounded each. For a moment Nzingha stood still and tense enough that she might have been carved from stone. Then her curved ears swept abruptly forward, their tips kissing with each gentle quiver that moved them. After a long season filled with nothing save the whisper of wind in the trees, the spirits had finally chosen to break their silence - but the tidings that they bore made the shaman wish that they had not. Bones! She’d heard them scream in a voice as rough as the tree-bark that caressed her dark skin. But whether they were referencing the bones of those she had damned or the graveyard of stone she feared Atlantis might join, Nzingha could not say. She could only recoil away from the primal ferocity of that voice and hope that its source did not find her. Given the option, the skull-faced shaman would have remained where she huddled like a sparrow seeking solace from the storm. But the next spirit-call that she heard did now allow for such a choice. Eidolon, please! The familiar timbre cried, the desperation and raw need those syllables contained scraping at the edges of her abraded soul. Get away, get away from this place! The voice had become sharper, savage - but if the warning was intended for her, then Nzingha did not heed it. Could not heed it. Long ago, the shaman’s mentor had warned her not to allow her heart to become entangled in matters of the spirits. But when it came to the one that she had named, the dark mare was helpless to silence her concern or shutter her emotions. If mzuka was in peril, then she would face that peril to stand at her side. And so Nzingha raced towards the beach, heedless of the vines that whipped at her face and the startled whir of birds taking flight. Once the Marwari even fell, bloodying her knees on the root that had tripped her. But even this reminder of her mortal shell’s fragility could not sway the shaman from her course - no more than the ominous silence that had fallen over the thick tangle of jungle. No more than the scents that pervaded her nostrils as strips of beach became visible through the trees: life and death, salt and blood. No more than the thought of what might greet her beyond the dubious sanctuary of the trees - for all that Nzingha feared the darkness, she did not fear the fate that would one day claim her. Kufa ni yetu sabili, hapo ambao asaa. A bloody tale was written in the bone-whites sands that had been trampled and churned until hillocks and furrows were formed. By sight alone, the shaman was able to determine that some great struggle had taken place on the beach, though its cause was not as immediately apparent. It was only when the slender, shadowy creature brushed past the figure of a red woman - scarcely seeming aware of her presence - that Nzingha found her answers in the two foals that had been concealed behind the wall of her body. And in the prone figure of mzuka, the red color of her coat deepened here and there with blood. Death. Death had come to claim these fragile new lives… of that, the skull-marked mare was certain - and without the spirit’s protection, it would have succeeded. “Mzuka,” the curly-eared shaman spoke, her voice both a fervent prayer and supplication. “Spirit, let me help you. Ask of this one - of your servant - anything, and I will see it done.” Nzingha’s dark eyes flickered briefly to the babes, and then to the stranger who hovered protectively beside them. She did not bear the spirits’ mark, and yet she had spoken to the one that lay before them on the beach. What else could that indicate but a shared calling? “Shaman.” The black Marwari addressed her, bowing her head deferentially. “The children - they are not safe here,” she continued, nostrils flaring as if in response to some scented danger. But evil did not always come in forms that were so easily discerned. “Blood and birth will lead the darkness back to them. You must hide them, protector. And I - I will stay and watch over this spirit until she can rejoin you.” Though her curved ears tipped backwards to listen for a response, Nzingha could not stand motionless while it was given. She felt herself called forward to mzuka’s side, and ran the velvet-soft skin of her muzzle over the swell of the creature’s bleeding hip with a regretful sigh. “Mzuka, you fought well. But I - I failed you, as I have so many others. Spirits, forgive me.” NzinghA mare . nine . black sabino overo . marwari . 16.0hh  |
Replies:
- BE THE OVERFLOW - By charybdis January 29, 2021 at 03:24:18 AM
- I will not vanish - By asphodel February 10, 2021 at 02:47:55 AM
- and here you are, living, despite it all - By Siobhan February 27, 2021 at 09:37:46 PM
- kufa ni yetu sabili - By Nzingha March 5, 2021 at 04:56:37 AM
- and here you are, living, despite it all - By Siobhan February 27, 2021 at 09:37:46 PM
- I will not vanish - By asphodel February 10, 2021 at 02:47:55 AM
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