Volpe
"Wind and words. We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love.
That is our great glory, and our great tragedy."
The cold was bitter here. It sunk it’s fingers into her shoulders and haunches as she lifted her way back up onto the shore, shaking away the wet and embracing the cold air as it whispered it’s way across her skin. Soon, it would dry her, and despite her thin coat and even thinner body, she would survive the chill, and she would thrive under these conditions- if only to prove her bloodlines proud. Little did the pale skinned girl know that she was returning to the birthplace of her ancestors, where mothers and fathers alike did give birth to children that continued on to become mothers and fathers themselves. She did not know how far the line would reach, but somewhere, way back and long ago, she had family that once lived here, ruling atop the frozen crests of the sandy shores.
Her hooves clattered against the pebbles of the shore, but her body knows where to go. Walking carefully and slowly up the coastline and towards the trees that would be the host of the man and his mares that lived here. It was not just the man that she was looking for, but to see the company that he held in such a cold place, to know that the child she was bearing (upon realizing that she could no longer see her ribs thanks to the slightest swell of her belly and abdomen) would be welcoming into a family that would, perhaps, be able to offer it more of a home than she could possibly hope to give it. Certainly, the pale woman would love her offspring, just as her mother had loved her, and just as her grandmother had lover her mother before her- Volpe had come from a line of women that were worthy mothers, loving their children and feeding them stories that softened their minds and their views of the world all around them.
Sinking further and further into the terrain, her feet begin to get cold and she wants to go back, to disappear once more into the sea and only return once her child was old enough to stand tall and strong at her side, giving her a hand to face the man that she had the shortest of trysts with and his family. Volpe was not often a mare easily frightened, but she had known for a long time that the herd life was not for her, and perhaps she was more afraid to have her freedom ripped from her grasp if she wandered too far into the terrain. “What now, baby?” She whispers, almost to herself but addressing the unborn child growing in her womb. It was still far too early to know if she was indeed carrying, and not just bloated from the abundance of food she had consumed before the full force of winter hit the islands in the face- but she knew. Oh, she knew.
She wondered if her mother would have been proud to know that Volpe had found a way to be a mother without falling in love with the first pale skinned man that wandered her way. Thankfully, the stranger that she had bedded was blue like the sea, and not someone that her mother would have stereotypically believed to be a trap for all women. Settling on a spot near the edge of the forest, the girl begins to pace slowly, waiting for someone to find her before she loses her courage and turns back to the ocean once more. |
