give a little, get a lot
Nadja hadn’t moved from the shadows of the trees in a long time. So long that she knew her knees would creak and protest when she finally got up, but she couldn’t rise yet. Just a little longer.
There were many reasons the little blue mare remained in stillness. The most present in her mind was mourning, though she hadn’t actually made the connection between the crushing guilt and sorrow that burdened her, pushing its heaving hooves into her back and pressing her body to the ground, and her actual inability to get up. She was exhausted, but she thought she was just exhausted, maybe even lazy. There was no reason for her to still be lying here, wrapped in her grief. She should get up. She should eat. She should move away from this place because there was a horse, a stallion, at the edge of the pool some distance in front of her and the striking of his hooves into the water was making her nervous. She couldn’t remain hidden forever; he would smell her, or turn and spot her in the trees, camouflaged as she was with her shadowy blue coat.
But she could not get up. Other excuses clicked through her head, one after the other: she risked detection by staying still, but she guaranteed it by getting up and running off. She didn’t have the energy to run, anyway. There was another stallion approaching and if the first one didn’t catch her, the second one would. She closed her eyes.
I can’t stay here forever, she thought. There was a dull pain in her limbs which were otherwise numb from her weight atop them and from the cold. A small voice in her head began telling her very logical things, like the dangers of lying down for too long, the unlikelihood of these stallions being aggressive when she had seen many horses on this island so far interact in peaceful manners. The voice told her she needed to get up, she needed to eat, she needed to move around and get her blood flowing.
Nadja shifted her weight and attempted to lift herself off the ground, but she did not get far. She heard the scuffing of her efforts, the snapping of a few small twigs beneath her weight, and anxiety churned in her stomach. She was stuck, and now surely she had alerted the two men at the pool in front of her.
What was she supposed to do now? The little blue mare gave a frustrated huff of air and tried to decide whether to try again, or stay in her hiding place and hope the sighing of the falls had masked the sounds of her struggle.
