Meadow

The water carried him safely to the shores of his home islands, and the gentleness of the waves was ironic, prickling at the stallion’s bruised and bleeding heart. The ocean in which these islands were clustered like gemstones; emerald, peridot, citrine and diamond, had taken so much from him. Only once had they brought something back. But, as much as he hated this sea (as much as a coward was capable of hating anything more than himself), it seemed that he was tied to it. It would always be part of him, or maybe, he was destined to be part of it. Perhaps the ocean clamoured for his bones, or the tangled roots of the great Forest of Luthien would call to him, as it had called his mother. It grieved his heart to think of such things.

Besides, if he had his way, he’d like to lay himself to rest alongside the one he’d first truly felt belonging with.

The weary bay and white stallion felt his eyes sting with sudden tears, and with a jolt of his head he sought to shake them away. It was not a path he dared go down, not now, not while he was alone. When he was reunited with Rowena (not if; he needed to believe that, if she could find her way back to him once, she could do it again) and Echo, maybe then he’d finally face the mistakes he’d been running from for as long as he could remember. But until then, he’d weather his guilt alone: the past would only remain buried for so long.

Shuffling along, holding fast to the thought of the mare he loved and the daughter they’d almost lost, the male ambled towards a safer path. A great storm had swept across the mainland, and he’d lost track of the pair of mares. Days, he’d spent searching, but had found no sign of them. It was a small comfort, in a way. Wherever they were, he was sure they were together. No-one would protect Echo better than Rowena. She was a mighty spirit, and the lone stallion had long sensed a deep well of strength within the shadow-cloaked mare.

A startling sense of deja vu struck him out of the blue, so strong that it sent him staggering to a halt. This place, this very grove of trees… Once upon a tongue, when he’d been young and innocent, his heart not yet broken, he’d wandered through here as a bright-eyed colt. He’d met a girl, dark as midnight, and he’d made her a promise. It was not the first time he’d thought of her, nor of the others who’d come to mean something to him. His dreams were filled with faces, only some of which truly haunted him, though he had come to accept that most of them were likely ghosts, now. Long gone, but living in him still.

In fact, the very night he’d met Rowena, not far from where he stood now, the same name had been on his lips. Back then, it had been akin to a plea, as if he’d been begging her to manifest before him. Now, though, he held out little hope for a reunion, and it was with a raw and ragged breath that he spoke. “Zaida.” A lump formed in his throat, and his vision blurred with tears. His tremulous heart throbbed painfully in his breast at a sudden revelation. A piece of it had been left here, undamaged and unblemished. As he cast about desperately for the beautiful thing he’d wanted to show her. Where - ?

There. There.

A tiny little cerulean pool, nestled along the treeline where the Meadow gave way to the Falls, fed by an underground wellspring. It was something easily missed, and not all that significant, nor really worth a detour unless one was rather thirsty and unable to wait to find a larger water source to drink from. It was not so much the pool itself that he’d meant by his words. But the boy Dances With Wolves had been back then was sensitive and clumsy in his affection. Zaida was the first girl he’d met his own age, and his childish, innocent attempt at flirting had been awkward, had been disrupted, had gone unfulfilled.

The reflection that stared back up at him from the stone-still water was a far cry from the sweet, youthful face of a bright-eyed, black-coated filly. (A far cry from the pale golden face that had been so thin the last time he’d seen it - nearly all the light gone from those soft, honey eyes that had come to mean home to him, and a great many other things besides. Stay. But he couldn’t, he couldn’t, and he’d abandoned the soul he’d loved more than anything - still did, because he was a coward.)

Ripples distorted the reflection, a bitter teardrop breaking the illusion. The aged stallion was left staring at his own tired, old face. A grimace twisted his lips, and he turned away, unable to bear looking at himself. But he could not bring himself to leave the area entirely. Lifting his head, the blue-eyed male twitched an ear, and shook out his tangled two-tone mane. Closing his eyes, he murmured indiscernibly beneath his breath. There, somewhere off to his right, muffled by the undergrowth, he heard the voice of his younger self - the ghost of who he had been. I came back for you, lionheart girl! The stallion winced at the phantom cry.

“Forgive me, for not keeping my promise.”

And there, unnoticed by the stallion who’d been tormented by life and his own weaknesses, unseen through unshed tears that gathered amongst his lashes like rime as his breath misted around him, the temperature drop set him to shivering… At the bottom of the pool something glinted for a brief moment.

A trick of the light, most likely.

But maybe it was a fragment of what remained of the first piece of his heart that Dances With Wolves had ever given away.

A heart that would ever be indebted to a mare who’d become his guardian shadow and pieced his broken pieces back together, who loved him despite his numerous flaws (and who was loved in return with the fullest measure possible).

A heart that had belonged to a spotted stallion since the very first day they’d met as a pair of colts (and always would), upon a shore not so distant, in a land whose chill had seemed so much lesser whenever they’d stood shoulder to shoulder facing the world and all its indifference.

It was so cold, now, Dances acknowledged, just a little late. His patched-up heart, repaired with gold, had been a little cold, a little hollow for a long time. It was his own fault, after all. That made it all the heavier a burden. But he wouldn’t forsake it for anything, no matter all the pain it caused him, nor how many nights he spent sleepless, agonizing over his many mistakes.

He carried them with him always; Rowena and Echo. Zaida. A precious few others. And Nephilim.

Sometimes, he dreamed he’d never left.

Some nights, he was that innocent and inexperienced colt again, wounded and wary. And he was not alone. There, on the rugged eastern shoreline of Tinuvel, a pair of lanky figures moving as one explored the empty expanse of the Bay for the very first time…