Falls

She turns toward his prompting without hesitation. Rille leads her, splashing, away from the falling water. When she is seized with a cramp and halts, leaning her whole weight against him as pain overwhelms, the stallion braces himself without comment and holds her, whickering soothingly into her forelock until she rights herself and they continue on toward the bank. They emerge like a pair of midnight thunderheads, all dark and star-stippled and pouring water over the earth. Rille ensures she is steady on her hooves before he shakes himself out from head to haunch to four feathered toes so that he is not so much a downpour as a drizzle. His eyes sweep the mare’s face as she relaxes.

She is willow-slender, whipcord strong, and smiling at him now as she reaches to brush his thick hair away from his eyes. “Sometimes that which we think sustains us ends up causing the most harm,” he replies, thinking of a filly who from a very young age realized how little room there was for her in the hearts of her parents. That learned insignificance crippled her well into adulthood— at least until the day she and her brother chose to discard the anguish weighing them down and swim for freer shores. The pain was not gone, of course. It came sometimes like a cloudy day and cast its shadows across his mother. Rille was there to bear the brunt of the storm when it came roiling up and out of her untempered: and so he learned, bit by bit, the story of the Poisoned Wood. “Luckily even the most tainted water will eventually run clean.”

Rille shakes his head at her question, amused. “Not at all, sister. I was born in a great forest of ancient pine trees far away from here. My mother is likewise mortal, as was her father and his father before him. We are wood-walkers all.” He looks further up the bank. The dew has not yet burned off the grass, but they are wet yet and a little more moisture might do her some good so long as it’s clean and still. The stallion gestures with his dark nose to a sun-dappled grove visible between the young trees at the side of the pool. The waterfall will be a glistening idea from there, its roar dulled to the decibel of its cousin the wind, and they may talk more freely with less aural distraction. He continues their conversation as he ambles toward the sunshine. “I am glad to have been here for you in your time of need. Perhaps it is I who should give thanks, however. You have eased a knot in a thick snarl I have been striving to untangle and that is an impressive feat. Thank you. Rille bows his head to her gravely as he comes to a halt in the warm grove, then turns and lowers himself in a generous patch of light, one foreleg extended and the other tucked up under his chest as he settles himself so much like a cat to bask.

“Please,” he invites her to join him with an informal nod of his head. He observes her as she settles, his eyes wandering over the white dotting her rich bay coat. As it dries her hair does not lose its sheen, and, Marvelous, he thinks. Like sunlight rippling over water, she gleams. His mahogany eyes meet hers once she is comfortable, and Rille considers the soul he sees there for a long moment. When he speaks, his voice is soft and the syllables tender, but indeed he may be blunt:

“Who is Moonwalker?”