There is no room in her raw and ragged heart to spare the skinny stallion any pity, and even as he insists he is nothing and no one , Shenzi longs to believe him. ‘Nothing’ and ‘no one’ couldn’t hurt her, couldn’t leave her. With a ragged snarl as she shakes the tears from her eyes, Shenzi staggers away, slinking back to the Crossing with her head low and she did not look behind.
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For a time, despite having resigned herself to the ceaseless apprehension and irritation that came with skulking about the soggy marshes of the Lagoon, Shenzi had thought she’d found something here, something to fight for, something precious, someone. But waking in the bitter hours one night, finding no sign of Nyimara or Warduna, Shenzi had tracked their scent trails to the beach. She stood there, the saltwater hungrily lapping about her hooves, thinking about the last time she had been here, finding a brief moment of solace in the company of a pale stallion who no longer roamed these isles.
There had been war looming upon the horizon back then, and the barb mare had sworn she’d never return to this forsaken place.
Alone on the beach, feeling so isolated and full of despair, a bitter sob rolled up her throat. She was a damn fool for thinking it would be different this time – after all, what reason did Nyimara have to stay? She always ended up alone – Nyimara had left, just like Kendry had, and others before him (though not all by choice, rest her brothers’ souls). Others she’d pushed away in an attempt to reach for what she thought was meant for her. Her heart, her broken heart, it hurt so much to remember the way Collision had looked at her, when she’d turned aside from him in the Dunes, and had chosen Maslakhat instead.
Maslakhat.
In the solitude of the night, in the silence that seemed deafening, something…. Something didn’t sit right. That stallion, the one whom she’d mistaken for the Dune monarch who’d deserted her. Though it was agonising to dredge up the past, especially with the memory of the golden bay Teke’s body lying stiff and sprawled across the sand, Shenzi had ventured too close to the edge of this void, and she could not stop herself from plunging in head first. And so, risking the wrath of the bachelors and absconding into the darkness just as Nyimara had, Shenzi cut a path through the water, drawn back to the desolate island of Salem.
Again, she doggedly walked the borderlines, restlessly searching for one scent in particular, growing increasingly riled as it proved as elusive and intangible as the shadow it belonged to. Surely she could not have imagined the encounter, her body ached in the days that had followed. With a snort, she cut across the boundary into the desert proper, recognising the small waterhole where she’d engaged with the stranger she now sought. And there, in the darkness, she dreamed she saw him, the narrow silhouette of his coming into focus. With a sudden surge of energy, Shenzi bolted, crying out in alarm (and genuine surprise) when she collided painfully with his shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” she rasped, regaining her balance, turning her wide copper eyes upon him. As if remembering why she had come, the little brown mare shook herself free of her reverie. “You’re here – I thought…” Those fever-bright eyes narrowed and she bared her teeth in a sudden, savage snarl. “It was you You killed him, didn’t you?” And the whole of her body shook, as if with grief. She would never know, now, never get her answers, always be left to wonder why he had left her, and whether he’d been trying to make his way back.
A ragged sob, and she lunged, wanting to snatch hold of the dark lanky male by his crest and shake him. “He left me!” Her voice was high and keening, whisked away by the wind. “He told me I deserved restitution, and left me wanting,” . Oh, how wretched she must seem, a wild, wailing creature with nothing to call her own except her wounds. “The irony of it is, I don’t think I would have been enough for him.” Something flashed in her eyes, a glimpse of madness, and she moved in on the stallion, determined not to let him get away, nor allow herself to be taken by surprise. She would not fold so easily a second time, nor would she ever be brought to her knees before a stallion again – not while she still had breath in her lungs and embers in her heart.
“I would have given anything, I would have given…” The words rattle in her mouth, and they taste so bitter upon her tongue, and make her want to weep. But though she wavers, weep she does not. “Everything.” . Her mouth twists as she desperately tries to hold herself together, and she reached one last time with a gaping maw, snapping at a wispy tangle of his mane. But not to harm, not this time, just to draw the dark stallion close. And there, nearly collapsing under the weight of a lifetime of grief, Shenzi gave way to tears, mourning all that she had lost, feeling betrayed by all those who’d left her, and acknowledging, in an echo of the smoky black Teke’s own words, a terrible truth that tied them together, whether they liked it or not. “But I’m no one,” she sobbed, turning her face away from the slim, scarred male, thick neck arching to hide the scars that laced her throat. “I’m nothing.” .
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