are the dead really silent?

My nostrils flare at the sight and scent of the approaching stallion. It was clear that this was his land, and his home. Invited, or expected, or not… I was an intruder. In the first instant, instincts battled within me. Screams of my forefathers shouted at me to challenge this man before my sister, ensure he is worthy of possibly overlooking the safety of my sister and others of my blood.

Calmly, I quiet the voices of those long dead and bow my head to the man before me. Merry meet. The greeting of old sounds stranger on my oddly soft voice. Whereas my body would have claimed I was deep of sound, in reality my voice was easily lost to the whispering winds. I study the man, he seems almost bored, as though the world around him has lost its thrill. Looking around, I cannot imagine what ghosts would have stolen his life while his body still walked. I am Samhain, and this is my sister, Ostara.

The filly was prancing through the tall grass, the stalks licking her knees and poking her nose as she lipped at them. Shamwari’s words had me flick an ear in his direction. Accustomed to the dangers of Tinuvel, I had no fear my blood would know when to flee a coyote, though I was saddened to hear a lack of wolves. They had always been my companions until their hunger drove them to madness. Rattlers, however, were something new. I had to trust her sense not to put her nose into something she should not. Still, I missed the calls of the geysers, the lash of the frigid wind, and the cracks of the weak earth beneath our feet.

As if she knew we were speaking of her, the filly trotted up to us and stuck her nose at the stallion’s shoulders and neck, trying to get a sense of the strange man she had been sent to. Is this the stallion father told us about? She asked, her voice far more bright and cheerful than my own.

It is. I am a man of few words when I can help it.

Her eager and excited look was heartwarming just as it was heartbreaking. She looked up at this new man with such hope, the spring of something that could be new. Do you think he will play with us like father did?

Wordless, I look back at Shamwari, watching him with eyes I knew were near colorless in their grey. I waited while a scared and confused child reached desperately for an answer I could not give.