Falls

Home; such a trivial word when what you thought you wanted was not at all what your heart was truly set in. She’d had it all planned out, the finding of her family home and that of her missing father and brother; to be a family once more but there were strangers who lived there now that call the place she considered to be hers home, and her family was nowhere in sight. So she’d made her own life in the lands bordering her old home, young love fueling her desire from the first day she’d come across Roheryn, on his own adventure to find his own family member, and in him Feray saw a bit of herself and had to go along for the ride. He helped her gain a small piece of home, something familiar to herself that he was not and she came to love him for it. Yet it is his angry face that stays with her and the shame of what she’d done that forever haunts the fragile confines of her mind.

It was as if all they had built together and strived against were nothing more than a meaningless promise she’d tossed back into his face the moment she’d been swayed by the heat of the season and let her heart open to another, who called to her more wilder parts and continued to let her fall through his grasp without a fight time after time, regardless of who she was or where she wanted to be. She danced an endless rhythm of twirling emotions, from one man to the other, her heart on her sleeve and open to them both but she lives in a world where it is just not possible to have both, and so she suffers.

Roheryn gave up their land to their oldest son, and still they had yet to speak to each other as Feray had taken to the outside of the herd with her girl’s and had done plenty to assure them and herself they would be taking their leave just as soon Ajnur held the reins; their loss was felt by Ajnur but he understand things were far too tense and welcomed his mother to come and go as she pleased. So without much thought she’d bundled up the girl’s and herded them into the water, and while she thought of taking off to Xio or even Sol, her exhausted body finds the way to the crossing isle instead, where she makes a bed in the grass for the trio to rest in, right near the falls. Here, they could breathe and she could at last think.

Days have passed since making her makeshift home here, the quiet and the greenery unsettling at first when she was used to the rough terrain of Salem but she was managing. The girls still snoozed, curled against the other for warmth against the chilled air since Feray had risen. Her eyes lingered on Esme the longest, seeing her father in her more and more as the seasons have gone by and one could not easily argue her parentage when it was plain for all to see now. It had been a fleeting thought to do so but then Sol had managed to find her hidden within the forest and everything just came spilling out.

She loved him; loved their daughter they had created together.

Yet she loved Roheryn just as well, and the two sons they also had.

The breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding in slowly leaves her aching lungs, a gasping breath as she tears herself away from the yearlings and breaks the barrier of their hideout to stumble without thought out into the open and carry herself onward on trembling legs, the roaring of the falls finally heard in ears that had been busy with her inner turmoil.

Another mare is there in the bitter cold water, a stranger she should be but Feray feels it in her soul that there is a sadness about the other woman that calls to her own and she can’t help but to take the necessary steps into the pond to come to the quiet aid of another wayward soul. “Does your heart weep as well lady of the water?”, Feray whispers the question into the still air between them, taking up beside the mare and looking upwards at the cascading rivets of water coming down the waterfall before them, a thoughtful look to her face before her eyes look back to her companion.

“I heard a tale that all bodies of water were made from the tears of the broken hearted,“ she begins to say, and while it may seem silly to be telling stories to a mare that was surely around the same age as herself, Feray found it to be perfect for distracting one from their inner demons, “I guess that explains the amount of water in the ocean and why it tastes of salt, but here? I think the falls take our greatest wishes from the tears we shed and make it into something else. For me, it seems the falls have brought me a friend, and in times such as these we need all we can get.” There is hesitation in the way Feray offers her body to the other mare, a shoulder to cry on, or even someone to embrace but she remains ever friendly in the sad smile on her lips that stretch out to brush noses with the coldness of the mare’s own if she’d allow it.

Or perhaps the mare would go running out of the falls away from the odd buckskin mare who just needed a friend.