owl
In the soft dark of night, another creature slipped quietly through the realm of the forest. She moved thoughtfully and deer-like, pausing often to cast a cursory glance around her surroundings; in these intervals, the small smile that flickered on the mare’s lips would spread wider to press soft wrinkles into the tawny skin around her dark, whiskey-smoked eyes.
She had half-swam, half-floated for what seemed to be weeks until her chocolate, sun-dappled body had washed up on this new shore at the closing of dusk. Once her legs had stopped quivering long enough for her to stand, the mare had merely drug herself far enough out of the ocean to avoid drowning and collapsed again. She had slipped almost immediately into an exhausted doze, splayed flat on her side like a newborn foal. It had been hours later when her need for fresh, clean water and some sort of nourishment had prodded her body out of its near-comatose state. After enjoying a much needed roll on the damp sand of the beach, the mare had carefully heaved her tired, aching body into a standing position and took a long, calculating look around herself – a luxury that her exhaustion had previously denied her. She stood at the edge of a strange island, with enormous (and some not so enormous) trees, wreathed in freshly budding leaves and in some places, heavy blankets of verdant moss. Her heart had lifted considerably as she made haste toward the fresh, tender shoots of grass that were fighting for their share of daylight and rain amongst their sentient companions. She had grazed ravenously, dark lips wriggling furiously to uncover any bit of nutrition that she could possibly pull up.
Once her stomach had ceased to grumble and growl (or at least, proceeded to do so in a much quieter and less frequent fashion), the mare had set off in search of water and that is where we currently join her. Although desperately thirsty, the chocolate and taffy mare was in remarkably good humour, continuing to pause at frequent intervals to simply inhale deeply of the moist, heady scent of the pines and moss that grew so vividly around her. She ached to soak each scent and sound into her skin and directly into her soul, as had been her custom when she was but a wee babe, so very long ago.
In time, she came to the very clearing that the strangely spotted mare was standing in the midst of. Surprised and suddenly shy, the dark-skinned woman stood quietly in the shadows, simply watching as the leopard-spotted mare looked repeatedly into the sky, as if one of the stars above would drop down to her and whisper an answer to her every wish and desire. The thought brought another small, gentle smile to the brown mare’s face. As the spotted mare turned to leave, the shadow-cloaked mare started forward, a small nicker rushing from her tawny nostrils.
“Wait, don’t go!” she cried out, her voice eager and bird-like in the stillness of the dark forest. Her thin, dark legs picked and placed themselves carefully through the mossy turf of the forest floor, closing some of the distance between the two strangers. Unwilling to crowd the spotted mare, our wanderer paused just out of reach and smiled softly, ears tilting backward and forward, subconscious indicators of the small shred of nervousness that bubbled unnervingly near the base of the brown mare’s throat.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly, ducking her head slightly.
“I hope I didn’t startle you. It’s just that you’re the only other living soul I’ve seen since I crawled out of the ocean.” She smiled then, tossing her head in a vague gesture at the moss-coated trees about the pair, scattering her forelock haphazardly around her ears in the process.
“Aside from them of course.”
i. owl
ii. mare
iii. connemara mix
iv. five
v. seal brown (Ata EE)
vi. 13.3hh
vii. played by Lissar
iix. html by Russell for Lissar