Falls

Rille spends the night near the waterfall, lulled into an easy sleep with pleasant dreams by its distantly sustained chorus, and when he wakes it is before the sun has disappeared the dew. It is time to return home, to begin his purpose on these Isles in earnest. He strides between the oaks who have shaded him in sleep, his feathers collecting moisture as a bumblebee might gather pollen, and in the short time it takes him to reach the bank of the pool his legs are damp, the thick white hair slicked to wet points near his hooves. This land is lush. If the Thicket did not await, Rille might consider making his home here, near the impressive landmark fountaining over a cliff’s edge.

He steps into the water and pauses only when all four feet are submerged, lifting his dark face toward the gentle morning sun with his eyes closed, nostrils flared as he breathes in deep appreciation of all this day offers. Light and warmth, the pleasantly wet smell of all the greenery thriving near this blessed pool, the constant rush of water, a woodpecker’s distant, hollow hammering. He will pass one last time under the waterfall before departing for his family’s shores. Rille lowers his head and opens his eyes, at the same time striding forward through the deepening water to reach his goal.

The black dappled stallion is wet to his chest by the time he spots another horse in the water, one who has been standing at the base of the falls long enough to have their coat wet to a shining black stippled, like his, with an image of stars. The moon has kissed you a thousand times over, little Rille, he remembers his mother’s voice and smiles as he wades closer.

The horse ahead of him moves suddenly and he pauses scant feet away from the falls. Her head whips about and she steps to one side, speaking to someone he cannot see even though he looks to the bank she appears to address. So, too, would his mother talk sometimes, when the night was darker than his coat and her brother slumbered too deeply to be disturbed by the soft crying that always, always drew Rille from the depths of his own rest.

Moonwalker.

Rille’s ears tip back briefly to hear the term from someone not his dam. He has remembered incorrectly: the first time he woke and stepped forward to help, the buckskin stallion stopped him with firm teeth on the flesh of his shoulder. Rille recalls each instance now, four in total. Never had he been allowed to go to his mother as she wept, quietly, alone, a firm No, indicated clearly by the immense band stallion who protected their family. Her brother had never slept through those instances at all, rare though they were, but watched in greater silence than usual as if it were his duty to witness her pain.

He had asked her, once, about her “Moonwalker,” and received a nasty pinch for his concern. Sometimes the ones we love hurt us, his mother had said as the buckskin stallion withdrew, lipping apologetically at Rille’s bruised shoulder. Her eyes had lingered on her brother as she continued, fondly, Sometimes they inflict a little pain in order to subvert a larger agony. She had said no more, and he did not ask again. Rille had been just a boy, then, and did not understand until much later, when she had begun to give him larger and larger pieces of their family’s history.

Rille snaps back to the present, tethered to the mare’s plea for help, and sloshes the rest of the way through the pool to stand beside her. “Here, I am here,” he beckons her, looking to ground her with his voice as he presses his dark nose to her damp cheek and exhales a steady series of breaths against her coat to warm her face. She is much darker than his dam. Rille utters soft, reassuring nickers and waits for clear-eyed acknowledgement that she sees him. It eases a knot in the ties that root him to this earth, a loosening of an age-old pain, a subtle healing that in this moment does not go unnoticed.

“Sister, come away from there,” he murmurs, sliding his nose over her jaw to lip a loose mouthful of mane and coax her with gentle tugs away from the waterfall. “Water cleanses, but water also carries away. You have stood too long in its downpour and risk now losing yourself to the current. Come away, sister. Come away.”