Force-claiming is allowed here once a week per character, as is blocking force-claims by the Peak/Lagoon (as a whole) once a week. Rollover is on Sundays.
As she flew across the field like the wingless shadow of some great bird, the lie of Sabriel’s previous words unraveled behind her. I was, but I’m done now, she’d claimed in answer to the stallion’s remark about running. For a moment, she’d even believed that claim— but as the initial strain between two strangers settled into something more comfortable, the silver black ran away from that, too. Not that her lighthearted teasing and desire for this game had been less than genuine. But from the moment she pulled away from Rafe to skim lightly along the snow’s cold-hardened crust, the nature of her flight changed. She ran not only for the joy of it— and it was a joy, to feel the tangles of her mane swept back behind her— but for the ease of it. To put it simply, she ran because it was easier to run than to stay and continue speaking to the perceptive, charming male.
Every moment she stayed with him brought her closer to the inevitable decision between her past and her future.
But if she ran, then she could delay that choice. A second, a minute, forever— it didn’t matter, so long as she could have her illusion of moving forward while remaining firmly rooted where she was. In the end, it seemed, she’d surrendered only the heavy burden of her grief. Everything else Sabriel clung to with a strength that surprised even her; until she’d spoken to the overo stallion, she hadn’t realized how much Solomon and Bondurant still meant to her. When she’d turned from the impossible choice of hurting one or the other, the dark mare had sought to tear her love for them out, too. But roots ran deep in the hardest and most scarred soil; the very wounds that had stitched them together would not allow them to be pulled apart so easily. She should have known— why else had she remained in the Cove for so long, even after her children were grown?
In rhythmic pants and the flash of a red body, Sabriel’s borrowed time reached its end. Slowing her strides to match her companion’s, the coal-colored woman stopped not longer after he did, still poised like a bird ready to take wing. But she didn’t. Because the words that she’d spoken before— they felt like a promise, and there wasn’t enough cruelty in her to break them. I’m done now. And she would try to be, for Rafe. For herself, and the years she might still have left in her. She would smile through the pain, and try. Tossing the windswept veil of her forelock behind her, the slender shadow turned to face the bay king with no barriers between them. With no secrets— save those buried along the Cove’s stony shore— and no lies.
Full bellies for the demons. And peace for you, at least for tonight.
Her heart ached with desire for that peace, but no amount of running— whether towards or away— had brought Sabriel any closer to it.