rade

If Rade had learned anything in his umpteen years, it was that the past, present, and future were never as separate as they seemed. There was a pattern to everything in life; just as the seasons repeated themselves in predictable regularity, so too did… well, just about everything else. Young were born and grew until they were capable of passing along their own genes. Leaders came into favor and then fell from grace, where they were replaced by someone whose star was rising. And the Vulcans— they nursed their grudges and unleashed their hostility on the bachelors time and again, until weariness or boredom or a decline in strength forced their attention elsewhere. That was just how things were, and the old stallion was beyond anything but exasperation at the chafe of that yoke. Two or three years ago, he’d tried to fight it. He’d tried to change things. But now… now he was just so damn tired.

The girl-child was quick to argue against his words and the Boss let her, offering nothing more than a cursory glance in response to her thinly-veiled anger. Apart from that moment, his amber eyes watched branches quiver in the wind, watched skeins of cloud drift lazily across the sky. For all that his companions could see, the roan male might be far away in his thoughts— so far away that their words would not reach him. But he heard, and he sifted through the muddled silt of them to try and glimpse the meaning beneath. The meaning of this, this... whatever this was. Not a fight, evidently, but the absence of violence in itself was not a promise of peace. And while the golden dun’s willingness to talk was the closest thing to a truce he’d ever achieved, Rade didn’t feel the stirring of hope he might have felt three years ago.

He’d answered questions during his time in the Peak, and talked his way round and round the endless circle of the Vulcans’ resentment. Nothing they’d said had changed anything then; how could it end any differently now?

“I went to your sisters to offer two things. The first was peace, because neither of us has truly gained anything in warring with one another.” His gaze returned to the mares as he spoke, drifting between them again. He would have said more, but the golden woman spoke then, her question coaxing the flattened remnants of his ears out of the ivory tangle of his mane. And slowly, tentatively, the bitterness of his expression gave way to something else. “We have more similarities than most care to see, but I would argue that our greatest is our inability to embrace change. Your sisters, especially, were quite determined to cling to the past... even when I did everything in my power to let it go.”

It was a testament to Rade’s ability to change, perhaps, that he made no effort to illuminate on the ways the Peak had wronged him in the past. That he even let go of his distrust of the young dun, baring his throat to her— to them both— in a brief and unconscious display of that willingness to set old feuds aside. “As for the others— well, we both cherish our freedoms. We both form bonds amongst our herd-brethren that are as close as any family. And we are both meant to serve a purpose that is not all too different from one another. You exist to empower women. The Lagoon is meant to do the same for men— to teach and strengthen them.” He paused, wondering whether here was where the wall would rise; whether they were true sisters to the ones who had come before them. Whether they could believe anything but the worst of him, the bachelors, and anyone who might come to this place in the seasons and years that would follow.

“I only meant to bring us back to that purpose. Both of us. I didn't understand, then, how much I was asking.” The shutters closed again, and the palomino tucked his chin tightly against the curve of his neck, gaze flitting back to behold the blue and green tapestry of his world. When he spoke again, his voice was hollow but heavy, and his shoulders curled forward with weariness.

“But I do now.”

stallion / palomino roan / arab mix / 15.1 hh