VaLkA

mare / eight / chestnut pangare / yakut / 13.0 hh

In the beat of silence that followed her confession, the red woman’s eyes opened again. They opened and flitted across the carved stone of Bacardi’s expression, searching for the answer that had eluded her only moments before. But there were no answers there, only stillness. There were no answers, only his shore standing stoically against the crashing of her waves, and— and why couldn’t that be enough? With Solomon, the only certainty she’d ever held was that there were none; a single word or act could crumble their understanding like the thin veil of ice over a fast-moving stream. Whereas Bacardi— Bacardi had held his ground against both the best and the worst of her. When her winds howled and her waters churned, she could not drive him away.

And in rare moments of peace, he welcomed her back with a warmth she didn’t deserve.

You still have a heart, skjaldmær... The hollowness of her Huskarl’s voice was terrible to hear, like the dull echo of hooves over frozen ground. But there was more to what the tobiano said than the words that he spoke; more buried beneath his layers of silt and pebbled earth. And Valka— there was more than she had spoken too, but she said it now. Not in the shell of her words so much as the vulnerabilities that shell fought to conceal. “-- and you,” the furry chestnut breathed, dropping her gaze a heartbeat late. If he’d been watching, the stallion would glimpse the curious warmth in her gaze before it sank beneath the endless depths of her doubts. “I care for you too, Bacardi.” Enough to be selfless. Enough to let him go, and leave what remained of his stone before her the wild nature of her waves ground it down to dust.

If time had proven anything, it was that the skjaldmær was incapable of the sort of surrender that love required. And that it was better to offer nothing than anything short of her whole heart, lest she lose Bacardi the same way she’d already lost Solomon. But it was becoming clear that in pulling away, Valka stood to lose her Huskarl in a different way. And so— faced with this impossible decision— the Yakutian mare made the only choice that she could when fight and flight were denied to her.

She chose to face her fears, and share the truth.

“I care about you enough to want you happy, Bacardi. And I— I know that I can’t give that to you. If I wasn’t enough for Solomon, with his crowd of admirers… then how could I ever be enough for you?” There was no bitterness in her tone when she spoke of the King’s other lovers; it was easy to see what had drawn them to him. And easy to understand, when she considered everything they’d given, why she was not their equal. She’d given nothing, after all, to be considered his. Not the Bay, not her freedom, and not nearly enough of her heart. “You know who I am, Hersir,” she continued, slipping back into his old title as she remembered a time when he’d been that and more. “You know what I am. And no matter how warm or beautiful the shore, it cannot tame the sea.” But if it could— if it could, she’d be happy to linger here forever.

If she could, she would trap them in the simpler moments of their silence, where a single touch said so much more than words.