Though he had tried to enquire about her past as gently and tactfully as he could manage, his words still break her, and he watches guiltily as Božena is overcome by her grief. He feels her pain as keenly as if it is his own, deep in his chest: so strong his heart aches. For a few moments he lowers his eyes to the earth, blinking rapidly when they fill with sympathetic tears. Then he looks over Božena again, noticing how the stark grey light from above accentuates the sharpness of her withers and hip bones. He wants to take her and hold her until she no longer hurts, but propriety holds him back. He has to remind himself that, no matter how much of a kinship he feels with her, he is a stallion and she is a mare, and they hardly know each other at all.
It feels imperative that he does something, though, so Kune reaches out and lightly touches his lips to her forehead, holding them there for as long as she will allow, and hoping that the depth of his empathy for her grief - though he doesn’t quite understand the source of it yet - somehow reaches her.
When finally she has composed herself, Kune sits back and listens patiently, hardly moving a muscle. Božena’s tale conjures horrors he cannot even begin to imagine. He has never witnessed or even heard of an earthquake, so he struggles to fill in the gaps of her story, but he hears the pain and terror in her voice, and knows she has been through something no one should ever have to go through. Hers is a different tale to his own, but it is no less tragic or worthy of his attention.
“I think you are right,” he says when she has fallen quiet. For a while he is quiet also, gazing at her with quiet contemplation, his heart so full of compassion his breathing is labored. Then he says, “I never knew there were others like me outside my own herd. Our people must have been connected in some way. ” He wants to ask her if her rodina had ever spoken of others like them, or if there was a split in the herd’s history, but right now it hardly feels appropriate to pry about irrelevant details when Božena is in such pain. So instead, he says something else.
“Božena… When I lived with my people I was a Strážce, a protector of the herd. It was my entire purpose, my life’s duty. I have been so lost without it to guide me. So I would like to offer you the same protection, the same loyalty. If we truly are the last of our kind, I cannot imagine being parted from you again. Will you have me?”
8; kladruber; black; 17.2hh
|
|