Seconds run together, merging into a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. An eternity. The onyx mare waits for that eternity, the lines of her body still rigid with wariness, her muscles still tight as coiled springs. She waits and she watches her nameless companion, her earth-brown eyes wide and wild and suspicious. But the stranger hasn’t moved save to bow his head and pitch his ears forward; he hasn’t shifted closer to her as their kind are wont to do. Why hasn’t he come? Ripples of curiosity spread through the dark pool of Lanfear’s thoughts, and she takes another step closer to him. Then another. Her ears are lost in the thick black veil of her mane, but there is something soft and new in her gaze. Something that even the Gypsy-blooded woman doesn’t understand.
This is different, different, too different to comprehend. She’s never been given the freedom to choose for herself before, and it’s... thrilling, but terrifying. Overwhelming. The white-laced mare halts her steady creep, trembling and tucking her chin tightly to her chest. Contenting herself to watch the stallion again through the windblown strands of shadow that sweep across her face. They are both wild things, as shy as deer and as dangerous as wolves. Tipping her head gently to one side, Lanfear remembers how still Gavriel had held himself while she was near, how even the steady rhythm of his breathing had stopped for a time. And while she still doesn’t know whether the fear that had frozen him was his or her own, she does understand the implications of living in its shadow. How powerful it can be. How it never truly leaves you.
How easily it buries everything else.
Held captive between the twin pulls of fear and that inexplicable gravity, Lanfear digs a deep furrow in the snow with one feathered hoof. She isn’t hungry, but she dips her muzzle into the hole anyway, tearing brittle strands of grass and chewing them for the sake of doing something. From the day of her mother’s death, the reclusive creature has understood that it’s easier to act than to not. Motion in itself is soothing, perhaps even therapeutic; it tends to hold the darkness at bay. Makes it easier to forget things like the last sound Morrigan had ever made, the terrible shadow that had passed inches from where she’d laid curled in the grass. And the smell of blood, like rust and salt and sickly-sweet rot.
Lifting her head with a sharp jerk, the spotted mare glances over at the male as if to reassure herself that he’s still there. That he hasn’t moved, whether that movement means moving closer or pulling further away. And the sight of him still there— a dark shape against the pale snow— is a comfort, dubious though it might be. Everything in the world that Lanfear has discovered here is transitory; nothing will last forever. They might share the meadow as she and Gavriel had once shared the cavern, but it’s only for now. This stranger, too, will leave her in time. And while the promise of his departure should be reassuring, instead it curls the inky woman’s body, and squeezes tight fingers around her heart.
One more step, Lanfear tells herself, edging closer. Just one more; just one moment of closeness. And after they've shared that, one of them will go. Just one more. She takes that step, then another, and then another. She surrenders herself to gravity, yielding herself to the inevitability of its pull.
She drifts and creeps until she's inches away, basking in the warmth of his body and his breath.
