Meadow

He watches her carefully. Dark eyes search and find nothing. She is a flame herself and he knows enough about fire to keep a safe distance. For each step she takes forwards him, there is a natural step back. The balance of weight tossed backward. He will not be burned, or maybe he will finally give inー

“Beauty is a useless thing,” he quips and turns his face from her. Beauty was never worth the pain endured to observe it. Gael was not blind, he knew beauty, but felt nothing particular about it. Slowly he lets one glinting eye to look at the mare, who has now gotten so close he feels the heat from off her body. Her offer is met by a fleeting breath. Gael steps away from her and looks out over the field of fireflies again.

Her tone is innocence and lavender. Her tone is white waters and sunsetsーGael smiles, the barest quick of his lips. The black stallion, small and perhaps homely to most. “I think there is more than beauty,” he tells her in a quiet voice.

The night is soft around them, it’s edges are not yet too hard.

“Something can be beautiful,” his withers tremble from gnats. His tail, thick and oily, whips lifelessly at his hocks. “And it can still be quite offensive on the inside.”

There is no motion towards her, no sign he acknowledges her now. She is close enough he could stretch out his nose and touch her warm shoulder, he could glide along the expanse of her ribs if he wanted. Gael could nip her knee or the bony joint of her elbow.

He could streak midnight against her fiery shell and there is a part, ever small, that wants to. That feeds off the energy given to him but he is too old now, grown too soft. No longer the wild, sinful stallion he used to be.