Meadow

Her loneliness knew no bounds.

“Yes, I suppose so…” Her family, dead and buried, had once been a powerful force. They had loved together and they had raised their children together. She had never wanted for anything, and she and her siblings had all been painted in the same speckled markings as their father. Once a great man.

This place is strange and yet familiar, as she knows that her hooves have travelled the meadows and the falls here when she was a child- no older than the painted boy before her. She had returned here to stare forlornly down the waters to where her home lay.

Yet she was certain she could never go back.

Under the night stars, she did not feel so desolate and alone. She liked to imagine that her mother, cruel and bitter as she was, had been softened by her death, and that Ephah was tentatively looking down on her. No longer concerned with what was the proper and improper thing to do, and no longer disappointed by her little red and white daughter. “I like stargazing.”

She lies, as she only can.

Asra knows that in peering out across the ocean waves during the day, she can make out the sullen and dark curves of her home, and she knows that at night, no matter how vigilant she is, she cannot see it. This way, she can at least pretend that it does not exist, waiting for her across the ocean. “Why are you out so late, then?”