El Aran spoke as if she were the voice inside his head—the contemptuous voice that shamed him for his inadequacies. You’re not worth the energy it would take.

Yusuf’s head rolled in the wet sand, those cold words coming alive as she spoke them aloud. Agony shot straight into his heart—a deep and aching pain that felt like needles pushing slowly and deep. He could only manage a soft, but shrill squeal in response. Death would have been a reprieve from the harsh reality of her cutting assessment.

As the hurt welled within him, bubbling and ready to erupt like hot magma, another voice pierced the foreboding calmness of the beach. A male—upset, angry and familiar to the mare. Yusuf listened to the exchange, trying to make sense of what was happening. Apparently it was not just the other male that had happened upon them—another joined him. Another that El Aran was clearly not happy to see.

Her hoof knocked into him and Yusuf cannot take it another second. He will not be kicked around on the beach like some ruddy, broken seashell. He used every last ounce of strength he had and lifted himself out of the wet sand with a frenzied flurry of hooves. He pinned his ears and yelled, perhaps for the first time in his life.

“ENOUGH,” he boomed with all the strength in his voice that the gods would let him have. “You all ought to be ashamed of yourselves!”

His sides heaved as he yelled at the three voices he could not see. “I have been blind my entire life, and all that time I wondered why the gods let me live. They took my family, my friends and everything in the world that mattered to me. They cast me upon your shore on the brink of death and YOU—“ Yusuf wheeled around toward where he believed El Aran stood. “YOU insist that I am not worth the energy it would take to kill me!”

Yusuf paused, albeit only for a moment to catch his breath.

“I am worth SO MUCH MORE than that,” Yusuf’s lip curled as his passionate tirade came to an end.

“You’re more blind than I.”


-yusuf