Night falls, and she stands at the edge of a pool of water, staring out over it. She watches the shivering reflection of the stars on the near-black surface of it, the way they are constantly disturbed by the activity of the falls that feeds into this body of water—the way her own reflection trembles along with them.
How fitting, she thinks, to be outwardly carved of granite, but to have her own reflection betray her and lay bare what she would rather be secret.
Because inside, she feels like a live wire.
Like someone has injected electricity into her veins and it runs an endless course with no outlet, and inside she shivers like stars on the water.
She would prefer to be still.
She would prefer to feel nothing at all.
With a blink of eyes that are too dark and too calm, she lifts her gaze from the water to once again sweep them over the land she has found herself in. When she had gone into the ocean she had not expected it to actually take her somewhere; she had assumed it would consume her, drag her down to its depths and leave her there, forgotten. Maybe it did, and this was some kind of strange afterlife she had been tossed carelessly into.
She doesn’t think she would feel this much if she were dead, though. She wouldn’t still fantasize about how much better it might feel to simply split herself open and bleed all this unrest dry, wouldn’t still be looking for ways to numb that dull yet relentless ache in the core of her chest.
A breeze shifts, taking with it the almost unnaturally long black tendrils of mane that cascades so similarly to the waterfall she stands near, spilling down the dark gray of her neck. A constellation of pale dapples lay scattered across her body, and with the near-black that climbs up her legs to match the darkness of her mane and tail, it’s evident that she is still young. It shows too in the youthfulness of her face, in the way it does not seem to occur to her that she should be cautious or unsure in this new place.
The arrogance that comes from thinking she has battled the sea and won.
No, she stands with her back to the new world and her face to the water, silently waiting to see what the night might bring her.
