Rim
dark bay Hanoverian mutt | 16.1hh | five years old | reli
you were wild once
don’t let them tame you.
She cannot say whether she truly hadn’t noticed the boy, or she had simply been ignoring him—for whatever reason, Rim does not acknowledge his presence until he calls out to her. Even then she doesn’t speak at first, only shift her caramel eyes to him in a snap of motion that is sharp and glaring. How dare you, they seem to say, peering out from under the mess of her forelock, dark tousled strands that cast her gaze in shadow. Her sides, damp with sweat, still heave from the exertion of her run. The air is cold and she exhales vapor with every breath, a pale haze that pools briefly around her nostrils—satiny skin that flares and curls as she examines the scent of this young stranger.
“Are you…running from someone?”
At this, there is a flutter of something in her expression, a ghosting of something that is half-sneer and half-snarl that haunts the line of her lips. He looks anxious, and she can’t help but take advantage of the opportunity to startle him a little. “Yes,” the mahogany mare sighs simply. The boy will want more than that, Rim is sure, but she doesn’t give it to him; she continues to stare instead, holding his gaze captive with a tension that is fraught by a sentence left unfinished.
After all, it isn’t entirely untrue, she reasons.
Rim could be running from herself.
(Maybe she is).
Another moment passes before the tension is cut through by the sudden whipping of her tail against her flanks. “So where’s your mother?” Rim questions brazenly, casting her caramel eyes behind the colt and around the wide meadow. The occasional movement of someone else is noticeable in the sea of green and gold, but not near enough for her to believe they are with the boy. “Are you alone?” She looks to him again, leveling him with hard eyes. Rim does not ask because she cares, of course—she is a selfish woman, and does not often bother herself with the affairs of others. It’s just that she doesn’t want some protective, overbearing mother charging up because she couldn’t keep track of her own nosy child.
If the bay mare’s prickly demeanor hasn’t already been enough to illustrate this, then the sour pinch in her lips and the irritated flicking of her tail are. How foolish of Rim to think that she could enjoy a moment to herself. To be left alone is all she has ever wanted since the death of her mother…
Isn’t it?