Meadow

Somewhere, at the edge of a cliff, lay the ghost of his family.

Children, spread to the wind, sprinkled all throughout the world. The sea, having swallowed the majority of them, had not forgotten the plight of his people. The whisper of tears still hung in the air there, accented by the stink of blood long ago dried. Of death and of birth.

And yet, there was nothing left.

No pieces for him to pick up, and the name of his father had been forgotten, only to be held on the tongues of the remaining children.

He knew Asra had returned, white-legged and forever the black sheep amongst Array’s children. Her laughter had once been the loudest, coaxing scowls to black and blue lips. She did not belong. She was too much of her mother, and not enough of their father.

The two of them, grullo and dark, and he black and white- like the night sky against the snow, had returned to a land amiss of their families. Names once uttered in fear and reverence, now forgotten in the snow. “They have forgotten us.” Us. The unified collection of both their families. Children, once loved by the painted stallion- an attempted restart to a more dignified existence of his family, had even forgotten him.

He had been away too long. “I am glad to have found a true brother of Tinuvel. There are pretenders on our seats.” Disgust and longing hang at his lips, and with cunning and an iron fist he hopes to rise up and take back what is his. To instill in the hearts of others a fear that had never been had at the mentioning of his father’s name. Array the Disarrayed, the Confused. Array the Rooster amongst the Peahens. Scowling, he knows that his father had been a joke, and it had shaped him into a creature of revenge and seriousness. “The island should be ours again. It is in our blood.”