The cold swells like a bruised limb. It swells over Salka’s entire body and she ignores it, elegant in her hostile environment. Witch of the waste, bitch of the endless cold that blends itself effortlessly into the white patches of her skin. Green is nothing but a memory now, that time when people fell in love and found each other. She remembers the black wraith who had touched her flank, and tried to claim her.
She has learnt things, since she came to this field.
She has learnt, more than she already knew, that others fear her. She has learnt more about the demon in her skin, the cold acid of the blood beneath her veins seeming more and more pronounced with each day. Salka, void of ambition, void of anything other than the bitter taste of death, lives not on grass but on the sour aftertaste of the brown roots she tears from the now-brown earth.
The cold, which kills early foals and the elderly, nourishes Salka. She has never felt better than in this vicious void, where others have first feared and now despised her. She remembers the sensation of the black mare’s claim disappearing from her side. The sensation of independence returning once more to her body.
Salka doesn’t notice company until it is nearly upon her. The sound of hooves in the snow is amplified by the clouds, the fog, an echo chamber of this other’s approach. The scent of stallion strikes Salka’s nose and she muses on a moment of curiosity. The thick body of a draft stallion drifts towards her over the white wastes. White flesh is dashed with something like a mix of cream and gold- champagne, even. His face is a rusty, pastel pink that reminds of cliff faces. His body looks strong and compact as he comes to a stop across from Salka. He is larger, and Salka watches him with a sceptical interest.
He talks to her, and the large stallion disappears into the words of a boy. Salka watches him, eyes ready to pierce and cut, tongue ready to do the same.
He talks of the trees, and Salka nearly laughs. She has been here for a long time now, she knows about the trees.
“What makes you think I need help?” Salka asks, her voice delightfully strong despite the time it has been since she last spoke. It is then that Salka notices that the stallion’s body is wet. Yes, he has crawled forth from the direction of the ocean. Surely he must be freezing. A better woman would have offered him a coat and shelter, but Salka had neither. She did not pity him, merely regarded him with an interest that was ephemeral as it was intriguing.