“Do you know why your name belongs to you?” Eastwise had once asked the silent colt who’d become something of his constant shadow, more faithful than the real thing in that he didn’t abandon the older male when the sun gave way to the deep darkness of night. Menelik had just shaken his head. He hadn’t wondered, and even if he had, he’d yet to find his voice to ask such a question. The tobiano had flicked his tail idly, and then tipped his head and levelled a pointed look towards his companion. The ivory face turned to him, but those blue eyes were distant, and when Eastwise spoke, Menelik’s ears turned back at the sadness he heard there.
“My ma named me. She said it was because of me… Because of what happened to her. That’s what led her and Dances With Wolves back to Rowena.” The names were familiar to Menelik, even though he’d never met their bearers. There was one name, one name that never quite found its way to those pale lips, and the silent and stoic shadow liked to think this one would sound most beautiful. Who? Who is she? Name her. If Eastwise ever saw the question and the plea in Menelik’s blue eyes, that were in a way a reflection of his own, the overo stallion never answered. Maybe the name of his mother just got lost. Maybe, wherever it was, it was wrapped up in Menelik’s voice. It was a comfort, to think that something that must be precious to his heart-brother would be wrapped up and kept safe.
Eastwise had a way of speaking about his mother, about his past, without being quite so clear. Sometimes, he’d stop mid-conversation to share something, as though it fluttered into his conscious thoughts like a bird and he opened the cage to set it free. Other times, he’d make some remark in an attempt to brighten Menelik’s mood. Occasionally Menelik would wake to Eastwise murmuring in his sleep. But, the times the young mute stallion recalled with most clarity were altogether different to all of these. His companion would say something that had obviously been weighing on his mind, because the words always came out heavy, and for hours after, Eastwise would join Menelik in silence. But despite the sombreness of it all, Menelik was always glad for these times. Eastwise always seemed lighter, as though each syllable had slipped a small weight from his raven-dark shoulders.
“Eastwise, because that’s where they had travelled. Southeast to Atlantis. Northeast to Luthien.” They were standing upon the bluffs of Banshee’s cliff, alone with one another. Banshee was elsewhere with Seze. Menelik had not seen his father for some time, and was eager to seek out the company of his brothers, Suleiman and Rehoboam most of all. But he sensed Eastwise needed him, and so he lingered, an ever-present shadow in the mist. “She prayed my heart would always lead me. But I cannot sense her, and I don’t where she’s gone, or if she’s even ---”
Alive.
Menelik turned away to hide his tears but did not drift from Eastwise’s side. The older male would perhaps never know just how much they had in common, nor how deeply Menelik could empathise with him. Thankfully, Eastwise didn’t seem to notice. But it was he who pulled away, much to Menelik’s alarm. “There’s something… I have to go…” Menelik struggled to pick up the murmurs of the one he trailed behind, especially once they picked up quite a speed. They were heading towards the border of the Inlet, and as they approached, the mute boy faltered and fell behind. He’d never left the Cove, and since the wolf attack that had claimed victims from their herd, he’d been even less inclined to venture beyond the guaranteed protection Banshee and Solomon.
But Eastwise plunged on blindly into the unknown, and despite his trepidation, Menelik would not abandon one who was as a brother to him, nor allow him to face whatever drew him onward alone. Fearful of losing track of him amongst the foreign lay of the land, the tobiano hastened to catch up to the bald faced overo. Thankfully, before long, Eastwise slowed, and came to a halt, but the younger of the two found his relief shortlived. There was a yearling colt lingering nearby, and just a ways beyond them, three stallions, all unknown to Menelik. But not, it seemed, to Eastwise. Menelik felt his jaw drop in alarm as he watched the one who’d led him here march right up to the gathering, with a certainty to his gait, a tautness to his muscles that Menelik had never seen in him before.
It seemed Eastwise had found courage and it burned within him. But why? For what?
One of the stallions, a great, scarred grey beast was down. Even in such a vulnerable state, this ragged stranger still put fear in Menelik’s young heart – he felt it clawing hot up his throat. The striking, silver-maned brute standing over him had a similar affect, and it was this one that Menelik watched, hawk-eyed, as Eastwise approached. But the two standing stallions were barely glanced at by the white faced stallion. “It was wrong.” Though Eastwise did not raise his voice, his words were clear and strong enough to carry back to Menelik. “You were wrong.” At this, Menelik skittered forwards a few steps, concerned for any retaliation that might be stirred by such outspokenness. But Eastwise wasn’t finished. “What you did to her was wrong.” Menelik wasn’t quite sure of what Eastwise was speaking, his heart was racing too frantically to sift through his memories of all that Eastwise had shared with him.
It wasn’t so much his very existence that Eastwise was condemning – though he was young yet in the eyes of many, he was a wise soul, not entirely ignorant of the ways of the world. (He did not, could not know that in this, he and Menelik were the same. Unasked for, but loved, nevertheless.) It was the deceit that he himself had begun to unravel, before trouble aplenty had descended upon them. The jostling for possession of the Inlet. The starving wolves, slavering for the taste of flesh. (Not all wolves looked like wolves, and not all dangers had sharp teeth bared to sink in deep.) But he was unable to voice this clarification, even as he sought to hold Warsaw’s gaze with a steeliness in him that had never been there before.
He looked into his father’s eyes, hoping that the aged and wounded grey monarch would truly see him, would truly know. And in his father’s eyes he saw a truth that, despite everything, broke his healing heart. The breath turned to ice in his lungs, and hitched in his throat. His mismatched ears, one black, one white, rose from where they’d disappeared into his inky mane, only to flatten in sorrow. With the familiar warmth of loyal Menelik at his haunches, tears long-unshed welled in his eyes and Eastwise finally found the words he’d been unable to say for so long. “Tell me you remember her face. And her name. Her name was Echo.” A raw and ragged breath, words so weighty and wounded. Desperate, pleading. “Please, tell me you remember, so I can--” Menelik trembled, and tugged at his mane, wanting so much to run – from the unknown stallions, from the grief in Eastwise’s voice, and from what would soon be the final resting place of the haggard grey king. But Eastwise would not be moved.
“Forgive you.”
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