KENDRY
| Out he goes, alone, prompted by no one's urgings but his own.
Kendry has spent over a year seeking a home for himself, but it seems fate has walked him in an irregular circle, for at the start of winter he found himself once again familiarizing himself with the Lagoon and settling in so easily it felt, almost, as if he had never left. The season has passed mostly without incident but he will wallow no longer. It is fortunate no one has closely witnessed his despondence; those who have met him before would not have recognized the unfocused, quiet, irritable stallion wearing Kendry's face.
Perhaps it is fortunate, then, that I remain friendless, he muses caustically as he traverses the Falls with the familiarity of one who has made the Crossing their home and not just a waypoint in their travels. Of everyone he has met, not one companion has he retained; he quashes the hurt under a hot iron of anger lest it recall to him a deeper wound, one bearing a convex profile and dark, judgmental eyes. Shenzi's scent is not in the Lagoon, nor Collision's, and while he is glad the former bachelor has made good on the promise that he himself was unable to keep, he is disappointed not to have seen either familiar face upon his return. No doubt they are happy together elsewhere, starting the life he once wished to have before it was thrown back in his face as impossible.
As he wanders deeper into the Falls the memory of watching the sun rise with Nattergal and Havelle comes to the forefront of his thoughts —the former who has also been distinctly absent from the Lagoon. The memory is bittersweet, recalling to him a less complicated time in his life but also more of which he craves: a family, sons and daughters of his own to raise. It seems a dream he is doomed to forever long for, for no past trysts of his have arrived with a foal in tow. No one he has met this last year, in fact, has come seeking him again at all. The heavy melancholy of this realization threatens to send him spinning to a darker place. Kendry shudders his thick coat and shakes out his mane before lunging into an easy trot, leaving his thoughts as far behind him as he is able before his blue eyes land on a familiar figure standing near the base of this territory's namesake.
Gratitude suffuses him to see someone he recognizes and, hopeful of distraction, he alters his course to head for the tall tobiano at the edge of the pool. The roar of the waterfall somehow becomes more tolerable the closer one is to it, or at least easier to tune out, and Kendry approaches to stand nearest the falls and take some masochistic solace in the frigid spray which mists the air and crystallizes on Kendry's creamy hair and coat. As he rounds Solomon to take his place on the slushy bank a few feet away from the Tinuvel stallion, greeting him with a hint of his old smile as he says, "Back again, I see, Solomon. Have you come to warm up for a bit here on the Crossing before returning to your cold kingdom?" his blue eyes are caught by the form of a horse in the water. She had been hidden by the other stallion as Kendry approached but now he sees her dark form clearly— and understands why Solomon stands near the edge of the pool with some intent other than to drink.
The white-faced mare stands belly-deep in what must be a bone-chilling cold, and Kendry has half a mind to walk in and join her in search of his own mental reprieve. He can think of no other motivation than the same doubts and pain which plague him that would drive someone to soak in a pool at the tail end of winter when snow still crusts the ground and floats in small, intermittent flurries from the sky. Madness is the only other option, one that he dismisses as he notes the deliberate track of her dark eyes over the surface of the water. He recalls himself with a start and, worried he has been staring for longer than is polite, hails her over the crash of the falls. "Oh. Hello. Bit early in the year for a bath, isn't it?"
|
OF THE LAGOON |
|