pay heed the squall Posted on November 13, 2022 at 12:37:17 PM by Charybdis
I could not leave again.
“Dere were a time,” Charybdis murmured beneath her breath, twisting her head around ever more sharply, discerning new scars etched into the dark mare’s hide. How had she come by them? Had she… had she been alone all this time? If Charybdis had been with her… But no, no, her place was here, guarding the Ridge, and keeping her beloved Atlantis from drowning in the sea like her brother, Cimarron.
(But she wasn't sure if she could. First the cliffs of her mighty mountain had crumbled, and then the ocean had sought to claim a piece of the Shore for itself. This was how Atlantis would fall, perhaps, in a manner to the way life kept chipping away at the heart of the half-sighted mare.)
“When I believe you could do anyt’ing, Faolain.” She held still, frozen in place, watching as the slender, too-thin black mare reached for her. And at the last moment, the bloody shouldered mare broke free from the prickle of anxiety that had given her pause, and moved to meet Faolain’s muzzle, drawing in a deep breath that was heavy with the familiar scent of her. “I hold to dat still, and always.” And how could she not, when out of all the souls that had left her, Faolain had been the only one with the will and the strength to come back?
Charybdis didn’t want to pull away, even though she could now no longer see, for the way her wildly knotted forelock had fallen across her clear eye. But the blind one seemed to focus, as though it wasn’t a weakness and a vulnerability. “Dere is not’ing I would not do for you,” the white mare vowed, her voice deep and husky with the weight of her words. “Even if it mean one day letting you go again, to follow where de ‘eart of you wan’ to be.”
And it was not that she doubted. Far from it. By the way Charybdis heard Faolain speak, she knew the black mare meant the words in one way, or maybe some ways. But Charybdis knew too well by now, with her island home smaller for the way the waters from the sky and the sea had claimed parts of it… The future was never certain.
But while they were here together, blood and bones and flesh, she would be grateful beyond measure, now that Faolain had come home.