Meadow

“It was worth it,” she said, and looked up steadily into his eyes, small and accepting, and his smile faltered. It felt as if her hand were resting on his back, her fingers spread around that blade wedged between his ribs, and her simple acknowledgment that it was a knife, that it was in his flesh, threatened to crumble his stubborn composure. He dropped his gaze back to her little hooves, ringed with soft white fetlocks and streaked with dirt and grass, and suddenly couldn’t wait for her to change the subject, but instead she continued, so gently he couldn’t resent her for her soft questions. He could still feel the bright glints of her sea-coloured eyes on him. He had always rather liked being as tall as he was- it could intimidate those who stood against him, or comfort those who stood in his protective shadow- but now, to have her looking up at him was… Difficult. Her height gave him no way to hide from her kind, thoughtful scrutiny, and a new, uneasy part of him shrank at the thought of being seen so thoroughly. He blew out a conflicted breath and clumsily tried to smooth the transparency from his face.

“Did they do something bad?” she’d asked, and in the deep shadows between her narrow, grass-stained feet he saw the yawning mouth of a cave and the bright shine of terrified young eyes in the dark therein. “Or did you just… know?” She was being so careful with him, and he wished desperately to tell her that she didn’t need to be- he was strong, he’d taken far worse than gentle questions in the spring sunshine- and somehow her care was… Upsetting. Did he ‘know’..? Would he have known, if that thing hadn’t announced itself to him with his brother’s face frozen on its bones? “They told me,” he mumbled with what he meant to be a chuckle but that came out more like a wet, wheezing cough, all too aware of her fingers tracing his imaginary wound and the blade still embedded in it; all too aware of her eyes on his face; his body. “-It told me. It has done many bad things, I suspect. I s- …That’s why I’ve come here.” No ‘I suppose’. Make it a statement. A fact. Immutable. He could make it true through force of will, if necessary, right?

He had come to make things right.

It was shameful to only be able to verbalize it now, under this stranger’s considerate interrogation.

He cleared his throat, forcing himself to raise his gaze through his curling forelock again, though it caught on the dark freckles of her mouth and hung there, rather than meet her stare. “Forgive me, I’ve been alone too long, I think. I’m Orestes.” Creasing his brow even as he tried on a complicated attempt at a smile, he tilted his head back down to her- intending to invite, but he had the thought it might strike more as beseeching to those sharp, clear eyes of hers. “May I have yours..?” Your name. ‘Your story,’ he didn’t ask, though maybe his face was begging for that just as loudly.