She’s circled the meadow twice by the time the stallion sees her, and uncovered a patch of brown grass that she leaves uneaten. The black mare is becoming more a scarecrow with each day that passes, too consumed with her obsession to be vigilant of her body’s needs. It’s unhealthy, really— dangerous even, given the unforgiving nature of the season. But every figure that moves draws Lanfear’s eyes and attention in a way that hunger, fatigue, even cold cannot. Because any one of them might be the boy from the ruins, the white stallion with patches and spots of tawny-red. Gavriel, he’d offered as his name. And then he’d spoken the name of his home; a place she’s seen only in the words that he’d given her… and her dreams. The Cove. Perhaps she will visit it for real someday. Perhaps she will peer into each of the flowers for his fairies, and witness their magic for herself.
But no— no, she won’t. As much as she might wait and watch and hope, Lanfear is stubborn and prideful and wild to a fault. And if this... Gavriel was to come to her now, the star-dappled mare would meet him with the same flash of teeth, the same dark glances that had been their beginning. For all that his company proved tolerable, the feathered woman cannot imagine him as anything other than a stranger, and certainly not as a friend. Friendship, after all, implies trust; perhaps even affection. And throughout the short years she’s lived, Lanfear has proven herself either unwilling or incapable of both.
It doesn’t matter that she’s got a heart that can beat and ache and break like anyone else’s; she’d buried that fragile thing long ago.
Her thoughts are drifting towards a third circuit when the gentle greeting turns her head, more out of reflex than anything else. By body language and distance, the onyx mare has all but made herself invisible to the other creatures who visit the meadow. But the hulking shadow her gaze finds is no wanderer passing through. Lanfear has glimpsed him before, not only today but throughout the winter. Until now, they’ve treated one another as a tree stump jutting from the snow; as an obstacle to be avoided. Today, for whatever reason, the delicate steps of their dance have changed. For the first time, they are more than two asteroids floating aimlessly through the meadow.
For the first time, there is a gravity pulling them gently together. And Lanfear, pitching her ears forward, acknowledges that force by edging a few steps closer, her ears already twisting warily back.
