Common

With each season that trickles past, curiosity has carried the chocolate-colored boy further from the safety of his mother’s side. Over the course of the past year, the Ridge’s Prince has committed every inch of his home to memory, and even ventured beyond its vague boundaries. No matter how much he wanders, however, it isn’t enough to dam the tide of life rising up within him. Though he has never seen it, Hades senses the world that exists beyond Atlantis, hungers for it. And with the restless energy of a caged predator, he paces up and down the narrow strip of beach until his hooves have worn a path with their endless motion. Until he can close his eyes and still remember the precise pale-cream shade of the sand, the foamy fingers of the waves, the swaying shadows of the palms.

But there are other things buried in his memory as well. Darker things unearthed by the taste of a single breath of air, by the glimpse of a familiar golden coat.

Darkness that scarcely yields to the silver haze of moonlight. Shadows twisting through dense jungle, savage screams fracturing the silence. And then pain, pain bright and hot and all-consuming as he’s lifted into the air. Released moments later into a world gone abruptly silent and still. Abandoned to drift into darkness even as the sky lightens around him. Siobhan’s voice penetrates the abyss now as it had done then, but it cannot calm the storm of Hades’s emotions. A part of him knows that he should go to the red mare who has watched over him. That he should protect her. But that voice is small; the whisper of a scared child drowned by the deafening shout of his fear. Yielding control of his body to that fear, the dark chestnut edges backwards until the sea is lapping at his heels. Turns to face it, his orange eyes as wild and white-rimmed as the waves.

And then gives himself to them willingly, choosing the unknown over the terror that has come to his home.

By the time he claws his way free of the surf, Hades feels as if his bones have been filled with lead. Pausing just beyond the reach of the grasping waters, he stands with legs splayed and head hanging down, sucking in greedly lungfuls of air. To his surprise, it iscold in this strange new place— not the chill that descends on the Ridge with darkness, but a frigidness that seeps through his thin brown coat and into his his muscles, turning them rigid and hard. Shaking the last remnants of seawater from his coat in a swift gesture, the adolescent stallion moves forward into the meadow that stretches just beyond the reach of sea and stony shore. And though the sight of so much grass coaxes famished snarls from his stomach, Rivaini’s son keeps moving, bright gaze sweeping searchingly over the bare brown grass, the golden-yellow trees. More pressing than his hunger is the need to stay warm.

The promise of shelter is strongest amidst the trees, so it’s there that he heads, scrabbling up a hill and following the meandering path of a stream. Finally the trees draw closer together, forming a protective huddle against the wind. Exhaling his breath in a heavy sigh, the mahogany colt edges toward a particularly dense copse with the intent of curling up there to rest. But when he wriggles his way through a patch of briar, Hades finds the false twilight beyond filled with the ivory and gold of another’s body. Freezing where he stands with the thorns digging deep furrows in his skin, he exhales his breath in a rasping hiss, the twisted flesh of one cheek throbbing with the ghost of a remembered pain.