I had not come here for her.
In truth, I came here for no-one, not even for myself. Long ago I had put the red and white Arab mare behind me, and it did not weigh on my conscience that she might not have let go of me so easily. I trusted that she would be safe with those whom I had entrusted her to. It would not be right to seek her out, to confirm that she was okay. I believed it would only serve to unsettle her, and be perceived as a sign of disrespect to her new keepers.
What had led me here, I couldn’t say. Though I had not spoken with him aside from the brief meeting when I had first travelled to the Dunes upon my return to the Islands, perhaps, after my encounter with the star child who was precious to me in a way none would ever understand, I longed for companionship of my own kind – and Maslakhat was the only one I knew, aside from the mare of fire whose name was sweet upon my tongue. But, unlike Nekharat, whom I believe had departed the isles for other lands, given that I had not found any trace of her in my recent wanderings, I had some idea of where to look for the golden bay scion of the Sand Dunes.
For once, the ease with which I located the one I subconsciously searched for was a bitter and unwelcome thing. I stood stiffly atop the dune I’d crested, wanting to turn from the grisly, sombre truth that lay before me – splayed limbs and bodies far colder than mine waiting for the sand to reclaim them – and put it behind me. There was nothing I could do for Maslakhat and the paler figure who’d joined him in death but to commit them both to memory – in this way, the bay stallion and the one who was a stranger to me would live on, so long as I breathed. But I did not turn and walk away. I would leave the bones of them behind, unavenged (for I did not know who are what had taken them, might never know why, and nor was it my place to seek ownership of such knowledge), for death was a cycle and it could not be undone.
But I would not leave her, even though I had not come for her. She was so different from me, even though in form she was perhaps even more exquisite than I. Where I shone blushing silver in the darkling hours, she was a grand and beautiful creature in the full light of day, shining gold, a sight of splendour. It was jarring to behold her standing between the remains of the dead. She did not belong in this place, not while the air still carried the stink of decay. “Come away with me,” I call to her. “Come away from this place.”
There was a firmness to my words despite my understanding that she was mired in loss – I’d come to accept the truth of my own nature; that even the other forms that ice could take – water when thawed, steam when heated – it was always powerful, and possessed force enough to cut through stone and cause devastation beyond belief. “There is nothing for you here, Çöl Gülü.” And like that to which I compare my nature, I persist, and I flow down the sandy slope to pool at her side, my body shaping itself around her form as I seek to push her away, gentle in this instance, but not without firmness. Never.
“Eyes are but reflections of the soul,” I murmur beneath my breath even as my own – which perfectly reflect the state of my own soul; a cold blue, glacial, distant – soften for but a moment, a transient thawing before a new layer of frost settles. (It is better to be cold and distant, even as the stars – to hold oneself apart. The truth of this lies behind me, as I endeavour to urge the golden Teke away from the corpses over which she’d stood her lonely vigil.) If she had not been so lost within her grief, perhaps I might have spoken my mind plainly, but as it was, I discerned that such bluntness would not be enough to reach her.
And that is why, just as a moonbeam filtering through a fleeting gap in the heavy blanket of cloud that hides all the stars that one may use to find their way through the deepest part of the night, I attempt to reach for her with a colder light than that of the sun, but a light none-the-less. “And I would see life and light shining in you again.” I do not known her, but understand this: I do not need to. There are few enough of my kind without the golden mare following Maslakhat for the final journey.
I tell myself it is for the sake of a star child that roams somewhere upon another shore. I persist now in this, so that the golden filly with inky dark hair and wonder in her eyes might have the chance to meet those considered kin to her. She is a far brighter soul than I, far purer, and she does not appear to carry my imperfections, nor is she close-minded as I can be at times (as is common among my kin in my own experience). I persist, not so that she might know belonging; for I perceive her to be as free as the wind itself, belonging everywhere and nowhere all at once – happy and content wherever it is that her little hooves walk upon the earth. But so that she might have yet another chance to learn of others. Chance, and the choice to embrace it, if this proves to be something her heart desires.
The soft and ephemeral caress that I brush across the golden mare’s cheek, though, and the way my breath warms the skin there – an attempt to rouse her from the diaspora of misery into which I fear she has sunk?
This is a tiny shard of kindness I carve out of myself just for her.
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