“Are you ok?” It was said so softly, so gently, that Avangeline almost wondered if she’d imagined it. She blinked at the tears gathering in her eyes, ready to slip down her cheeks along the damp path their previous brethren had, and drew in shaky, broken breaths. Only when she saw him, the white of his face seeming to glow against the dark of his body, did she realized she hadn’t dreamed it up. Ears forward, she listened as she spoke again, and tried as hard as she might to smile; only the smile trembled on her mouth and fell away as quickly as she’d tried to put it there.
“You’re…” She found her voice robbed from her, swallowed back the burn of tears, and tried again, “you’re a good son, then.”
The tide of her tears had pulled back, but it meant, just as the ocean’s waves, it would come crashing back again. Her moment of attempting to keep it together was torn asunder as the sorrow and misery came back, filling her eyes again with the burn of tears. Ashamed to be seen as she cried this way, Avangeline turned her neck, moving her face away and choking back a small sob.
How was she to explain it? How was she to say what it was which had finally taken her down? How could she say that for the past few months she’d been holding on to a glimmer of hope and now, cruelly, that hope was being taken from her? There was no way to explain everything, not without the young colt agreeing with her biggest fear and leaving her alone to her woes…
“I think I’ve gone crazy,” she whispered when she could find her voice again, tears momentarily stilled as she hiccupped gently. “How do you know if you’re crazy?” She asked, soft voice adopting a more desperate tone, head turning so her eyes could search him.
Avangeline
three year old buckskin akhal-teke mare