open up the skyline Posted on July 6, 2022 at 06:16:15 AM by charybdis
expand my view from silence The crack of his hoof upon the stone split the air, and Charybdis released the breath she’d been holding with a low, drawn out hiss. The half-blind mare knew she’d have to tread lightly. Though she was in be there condition than she had been when she’d sent them tumbling into the waves together upon her beach, she knew the black stallion to be a formidable foe, and though she had purposefully steered herself away from his family (hoping to convey that it was not any of them she wanted, just him), she was still trespassing upon his land, and he had every right to be aggressive in defence of what was his.
Tempted as she was to draw this out, Charybdis decided against keeping him waiting for long. She reasoned that if she answered his summons promptly, it might make him ever so slightly more cooperative when it came to giving her what she wanted. And so, with steady and sure steps, she slowly came into view, her bright-and-blind eye fixed upon him intensely, her very posture conveying confidence, but not aggression, not yet.
The Ridge mare opened her mouth, as if to speak, but the way his chest rose and fell mirrored the gently heaving of her own sides, though she’d had a little longer to catch her breath. That she oft clambered up the jagged spine of the Ridge made this little jaunt a little less strenuous on her than it might otherwise have been. But it hadn’t occurred to her that it would take a similar toll on the figure of Darkness before her. And suddenly, the question coiled like a serpent on the tip of her tongue turns on her, giving her pause and making her question herself.
She had tasted his blood, had crashed headlong into him upon her shoreline, so she knew he wasn’t incorporeal. He held a physical presence. But, she hadn’t… She hadn’t expected this. Perhaps the collapse of the mountainside had shaken her more than she’d thought. Or perhaps it was a trick of her mind, which had been damaged once, so so long ago, so completely that it would never heal.
Something crosses her face, then, something inscrutable, and she rumbles deep in her chest, a sound not unlike distant thunder, something ominous held at bay. With a shake of her head, she settles heavily where she stands, determined not to be moved. Charybdis had come here, seeking answers, but here in the heights, so far from the Ridge, she felt unbound. The emptiness inside her, a reminder of all she had lost, roared in her ears.
Perhaps that was why she was here. That yawning abyss was always churning inside her, and if anyone were to escape it once falling into her turbulent currents, surely it would be the savage stallion who stood in silence upon the precipice, cloaked in shadow where Charybdis was speckled with salt from the sea.
"What are you?" the words are soft on the air, guttural and growled, more noise than anything, and barely discernable, given the husky, hoarse way Charybdis forces them up her tight throat, constricted and raw as it is by the intense emotions coursing through her.