Meadow

Rivaini

Rivaini had emerged from the sea days ago - and yet still felt as if she was drifting.

After the toll the harrowing crossing had taken on her body, the silver bay coddled herself for a couple days. Having parted ways with Bjorn, Solomon, and Sauron, she took shelter in a copse near the falls, emerging only to feed or to drink from the still pool. Unfortunately, the combination of inactivity and solitude left the mare with the constant company of her thoughts, which were inevitably filled with Iscariot. At times, grief threatened to bury her like the blanket of white that now coated the ground - cold and inexorable. But Rivaini had always been strong of will and pushed back against the numbness that inevitably followed her tears. It would have been easier to embrace the apathy - to let it dull the hurts in her heart - but the rusty-coated mare would not, could not allow it.

Iscariot may be dead, but she was determined to keep his memory alive in the pain that she felt.

Though it could have hardly been considered warm to an equine who hailed from a more tropical clime, the absence of the frigidity that had greeted Rivaini upon her arrival had lulled her into a sort of acceptance. She was too naive to understand that the mild winter days were a harbinger of the tumultuous weather to come - the calm before the storm, so to speak. In a distant corner of her mind the bay mare noticed that the stirrings of life in this place had become fewer and further between, but dismissed the observation as she pushed through the bare-branched walls of the thicket and into the clearing.

There was a briskness to the wind that stung her coppery pelt like grains of sand, but the sensation only served to waken Rivaini from her torpor. She felt more alive than she had since....well, long before her departure from the only home she'd ever known. Lifting her hooves in exaggerated, high-stepping strides, the Andalusian mix passed by the pool without a pause, blue eyes failing to notice the thick coating of ice that had begun to form at its edges. Turning her lithe body south, she passed through the windbreak of scraggly trees that bordered the Falls, floundered briefly through a snowdrift, and emerged into a large meadow.

Out here the snow was scarcer - it tended to gather in drifts and pockets toward the outskirts of the area, where the wind had undoubtedly caused it to settle. The bare grass seen was more gold than green, but still a welcome sight to the silver bay who'd spent the past few days supplementing the sparse grass of the Falls with far-less-palatable bark and twigs. Perhaps it was the pangs of her hunger and the promise of a good meal that enabled Rivaini to overlook the turbulent sky, which had abandoned its typical blue palette in favor of countless shades of grey. Or it may have been caused by the bittersweet memories of her brother that continued to haunt her mind.

Whatever the reason, a blizzard was brewing - and Rivaini, blissfully unaware, stood in the midst of its quickening heart like an offering to the storm gods.

mare / five / silver bay tobiano / andalusian mix / 15.3hh