The stillness of the world is loud enough that it penetrates the black mare’s slumber. Vague images of her silver-haired mother and a bright golden sun begin to lift like skeins of fog in the wind, drifting away even as Lanfear clutches desperately at their trailing ends. She is desperate to cling to the lingering remnants of warmth and comfort and happiness; desperate to escape the harsh truths of her world. Desperate to bury herself in memory for hours, days, even seasons in lieu of embracing the hollow shell that her life has become. That she has become. Not a boulder after all, but the lifeless remains left behind by some careless creature. Beautiful to look at, but defined by sharp edges and fierce teeth. And fragile for all her feigned strength and savagery.
Fragile enough that a single blow might break her.
Reality, however, does not arrive as the anticipated blow. It arrives in a series of icy kisses that trail a searing path across her dark skin. It arrives in the thin, crisp, cold tang of the air. It arrives in a cavernous silence that is broken only by the soft creak of branches and the soft sighs of the woman’s breaths. And Lanfear— emerging from the sanctuary of her tightly-curled body by small degrees— is greeted by a world far different than the one she’d parted with only hours before. A world whose angles and planes have been softened into gentle curves by a blanket of snow. A world so starkly-white that her dark eyes narrow into slits that flit about the clearing habitually. Seeking the shadowy creature who is more stranger than companion— but whose constant presence reassures her that she is not alone.
—only suddenly, she is. Suddenly, the meadow is bare of all life save for the spotted mare with her frantically-leaping heart. Rising on legs that feel boneless and weak, a strangled call squeezes past the choking gorge of panic and tears to echo across the empty field. But before the last note has died, she is already stumbling and floundering through the deep pockets of snow; crossing the invisible boundary that establishes her side and his. Poking her muzzle in the sheltered spaces beneath each pine and following the faded trails of his scent in increasingly-erratic loops. And then, finally, sinking to the bare ground beneath a towering fir with a soft, breathless whimper when she can find no evidence that the sable stallion remains— or that he will return.
The wind shifts, and snow begins to drift beneath the needled branches to land, heavy and wet, on earth and flesh alike. It’s falling thicker now than it was before, faster; forming a coat of pale ash that threatens to bury Lanfear where she lies. And— damp and shivering— the inky woman lets it. As the minutes tick past, the blanket of white on her rump grows gradually larger and cold begins to seep down into her bones. But its numbing embrace is not entirely unwelcome.
If nothing else, it offers an escape from her solitude and her sorrow…and the first touch that she has surrendered to for almost a year.
