Meadow

Kendry plods through what is likely the last snow of the season. It is light, powdery, and glitters enticingly under the moonlight. He embraces this solitude. The night is quiet, empty of sounds save his own heavy tread and, distantly, the high cry of an owl. He feels deeply introspective this night and allows himself the absorption of his thoughts as he makes his measured way north toward the shoreline that faces Luthien. He thinks of home, and all that the word means to him. He thinks of family, too, and spends a fair portion of his trek indulging in nostalgia.

The owl’s cry is closer now, but it is something else that has drawn the perlino out of his own head. He raises it to glance about, ears twisting, until the sound comes again and he steers himself left. A cough, hollow and wracking, guides him to a copse of evergreens. The space between the trees seems dense, darker than it truly is from the weight of the snow holding the lower branches down, and the moon spills haphazardly between the trunks to illuminate a tiny (comparatively) mare.

She’s older than he’s used to seeing around here, back beginning to sway, her bold gold-and-white coat rough from more than just the shagginess each horse inherits in winter. She noses through the snow intent on dragging each stubborn blade of grass out of the frozen earth, undisturbed but for that cough—and now the heavy draft stallion who makes no attempt to disguise his approach.

With age comes wisdom, unless of course the individual in question has insisted on perpetuating their ignorance with the same fervor most devote to self-improvement, but that is impossible to tell just by looking and Kendry would be willing to bet not the case of this mare. She can’t be that much older than he, but she looks tired. Bone-tired. “You look as though you carry a thousand stories upon your shoulders,” he greets her quietly, his low voice carried on a light plume that fades more quickly than his baritone.