Desert

As she relives her past through the words that she speaks, the trappings of the young mare’s present seem to fall away. Chelle forgets that she is in a strange land far from the only home she’d ever known. She forgets, too, that she is speaking to a man whom she can scarcely claim to know; a man she has no rights to seek comfort from. Instead, the freckled girl breaches the careful distance between them, shifting her slender body closer to his. Letting the curves of their shoulders and hips meet in a gentle press of warm flesh that is as reassuring as it is forbidden.

Cain turns to look at her then and the amber mare flushes, wondering if she has overstepped some unspoken boundary. Tipping her head away from the intensity of his gaze, Chelle prepares herself to step away from the stallion. When he begins to speak, however, his words are not at all what she’s expecting. She is braced for chastisement, perhaps even a rebuff. Instead, her ears tip back to catch the first syllables of her companion’s own tale. And despite herself, the reddish-gold woman turns back towards the source of the deep voice— breaking the demure slump of her shoulders to reveal a glimpse of the bolder creature she is beneath her ingrained docility.

The portrait that Cain paints of himself is as honest as she has learned to expect from him; as bare and unembellished as the sandswept wasteland that he calls home. His words carry her through the abuses of his distant past even as her mind struggles to process everything that he’s endured. They dwarf her own troubles by far— yet instead of feeling insignificant, Chelle is emboldened by the connection of their shared pain. Leaning closer to the muscular male, she skims her lips over the dark skin of his cheek and then tucks her muzzle into the hollow of this throat. Exhaling her warm breath into the heat of his skin, the red-haired girl is silent for the span of a few heartbeats. Offering the comfort of her presence, and an understanding that runs deeper than words.

But no moment is made to last forever, and after a few seconds Chelle pulls away. Her green eyes search the stallion’s brown for any evidence of discomfort or displeasure as she does— but Cain is still a stranger to her, and difficult to read. Choosing to focus instead on his concern for burdening her with the full weight of the truth, she shakes her head and offers a smile that echoes the gentle sympathy of her gaze. “You’ve done nothing wrong, Cain. I’m… grateful for everything you’ve shared, especially knowing that it isn’t any easier to relive the past in words than it is to experience it as it unfolds.” She lapses into silence, then. Wanting to ask about them, these names that mean nothing more to her than the sum of their syllables— but uncertain just how deep the roots of her companion’s grief go.

“I disagree with you on some of what you said, though,” Chelle finally begins after a moment, her voice soft and almost-apologetic. “Looking at what you’ve built here in the desert— I can’t believe that it is cursed, let alone because of your actions.” She bows her head to look down at the ground, then glances up at the piebald stallion through the red fringe of her eyelashes. “Whatever you were, you’ve changed. And if the world truly held us accountable for the deeds of our past— why, then I would have never been graced with the chance to know you.”

Of course, she suspects that convincing Cain of these truths will not be as simple as speaking them. But Chelle is inexplicably determined to show the stallion his worth, even if it takes her seasons to unravel the barbed threads that life has woven across the scarred surface of his heart.

Perhaps it's because— in accomplishing this— she believes that she might also repair what is broken within herself.