From the beginning, Varten's reality deviated from normal. There were of course the basic similarities between his life and any other foal —he drank his mother's milk and gamboled about her heels, daring daily to test the length of the invisible tether that drew him irrevocably back to her hip after each dash to a new distance— but there it ended. He grew used to hearing his mother speak, often, and learned to which tones he needed to pay attention. A slow pattern of speech paired with a glance his way was something he understood to be directed at him, but generally the quick, decisive commentary had little to do with the silver-charcoal colt, and he was free to focus on his explorations of what made the grass move or how clouds were able to fly or how many times he could circle his mother without touching her while she led them down the beach.
Sometimes his play was interrupted by an abrupt action from his mother, but these instances he understood to be normal and had begun to have an ear for the tone of voice that might precede each one. As he grew, Varten would become adept at identifying subtleties in speech— a necessary skill for a son whose mother was plagued by horses no others could see or hear. On this day, however, all the colt was aware of was his mother muttering under the crash of the rolling surf as he leapt away from her shoulder to plunge his front hooves into the curling tide. It was the strangest thing he'd ever seen in his short life, wild in a way the grass was not, and where it touched him the air gripped his wet legs with tiny, prickling teeth.
Before he could explore it any more, his mother pivoted and headbutted him. Varten squealed, though it was more surprising than painful, and backtracked away from her as she herded him off the sand and onto the stiff grass. Her eyes were wild and rolling and so he turned to bound out of range, just in case she meant to use her teeth, but her ringing cry weighted his hooves with guilt and the colt stopped. He turned, then, and warily made his way back to his mother, where he reached his small dark nose up toward hers and clicked his teeth. |