As a girl, her mother used to tuck her into bed every night.
Beneath the blanket of stars, and swaddled in the sweet grass of their home, her mother would hold her gently as she sang soft lullabies of faraway places. “You are meant for so much more than this,” she would say after a moment of silence, when Rim’s eyes had grown heavy and her lashes fluttered against her cheeks, “so much more, my little princess.” Then she would pull her daughter close, and place a kiss on each spot of white: first her forehead, and then her nose. And Rim, in her young slumber, would sigh happily against her mother’s warm breast.
It is that same sky that Rim stares at now—swathed in the deep blues and purples of the witching hour—but the stars are different here, the constellations have transformed, and she knows that she has changed with them.
(Did they have a choice?)
Because…
she didn’t.
With her mind laden by memories, Rim is sure that she will not sleep tonight. She has relived the echoes of those lullabies enough times to understand how her heart aches, how her skin yearns to feel that familiar embrace again, and she knows now that nostalgia will effectively chase away any hope of rest. With her caramel eyes lingering a moment longer on the twinkling glitter of stars, she resigns in a slow release of breath. Pushing herself up from the cold grass (it is nothing like the swaddling she remembers from her childhood), Rim stretches before ambling forward.
Her strides sweep casually through the emerald blades, nearly frozen again after the thaw of spring; the midnight dew sparkles in the moonlight. She can hear the roar of a waterfall, but she has yet to catch a glimpse of its frothy cascades, instead allowing the curve of the banks downstream to guide her path. Suddenly pausing mid-step, Rim studies her reflection in the water. There is an elegance in her features that is contributed by her breeding, but there is also a ferocity in her gaze and a hardness in her jaw that offsets any suggestion of delicacy.
Staring back into those wild eyes, she can’t help but wonder—
Is this what her mother had wanted for her?
you were wild once
don’t let them tame you.
Rim
dark bay Hanoverian mutt | 16.1hh | five years old | reli