Gabbar
stallion . arabian . bay . 14.3hh . 8
Her questions are uncomfortable. Gabbar shudders his skin as he considers her words and glances skyward at the lights twinkling softly overhead. He is glad there is no moon. This conversation is so much more suited to the dark: just a couple of voices and the bright glint of their eyes as they catch the faint light. “I’m rejecting the way I was raised,” he says. “And I believe the first step is forgiving myself. For all the things I’ve never been able to control but have still shouldered as my responsibility.” Yes, that sounds right. He exhales deeply and feels some tension in his muscles ease.
The cadence of her words —and her choice of vocabulary— reminds him of the seers of his homeland. They, too, spoke in hushed reverence of the power of destiny. Gabbar himself does not know whether or not he believes in fate. His theology, or rather the theology he was raised with, left no room for conjecture of an individual’s purpose. All stallions exist with the purpose to breed if they are worthy. There is no other path for a breeder to take. But Gabbar has cast that aside, is reevaluating how he sees the world and his own place within it, and he considers the idea of fate now. It is entirely possible that it was no divine accident that he was sent away from the war in the desert to find himself here, on these Islands, rejecting his upbringing and embracing a new identity.
“I was born in a land very far from here,” he says. “As of this moment I am not headed anywhere. Not anywhere physical, that is.” Gabbar pauses, purses his lips. Her eyes are such an avid blue looking back at him. “My journey is more of an inward path than an outward one. Tell me,” he continues, feeling more bold the more he shares of himself. “How do you know you are meant to be here? Do you commune with the gods?” |