when ego walks with avarice
Where the ocean fills her ears with the roaring heartbeat of Fathersound, Ailill has always been like the sun in Shararat’s eyes. He is dawn-spun gold, twisting and prancing to complement each spin and sidestep performed by banked coal. She follows his lead up the beach, breathless yet still laughing, and likewise beckons the black mare who still stands apart. “Ak Burun!”
The Akhal-Teke observes this wild display dispassionately, ears turning out and then back as the two cavorting horses try to convince her to join them. She raises her narrow head, haughty, and gives it an emphatic shake. “Gülünç görünüyorsun,” Ak Burun mutters as she pins her ears. But as the two dance farther away from her, she steps forward to follow them at a discreet distance, lowering her head to nose idly at various flotsam on the beach to further impress upon any onlookers that she is not with those two.
Shararat is used to the sort of chagrin and disdain Ak Burun responds with. It barely compares to Iftikhar’s ire, a fury so palpable Shararat often had to check her hide for burn marks after a spat with her mother. As she defied the red mare as a filly, so she denies Ak Burun’s disapproval now, dismissing the surly storm cloud behind her with a loud snap of her tail before she flags it, flying the black of insolence.
And then she leaps at Ailill, throwing herself closer to him and to their dance, forcing careful footwork from each of them to ensure neither scrapes the knee or heel of the other while still maintaining their rhythm and pace, her legs beginning to burn from this exertion in the deep sand. Her eyes are so bright, her smile a sunbeam, and she looks up laughingly into Ailill’s face as they dance down the shore.
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shararat & ak burun
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