i see the forces for what they truly are Posted on June 5, 2022 at 04:51:42 AM by charybdis
yet i'm reminded of my beating heart
The rivers were angry with her. The heavens too. Charybdis could feel all this wrath drawing her out of the shallow darkness into which she had slipped. Heavy drops of rain, pattering on her skin. Not even the canopy above was enough to shelter her. The whole of her body ached, but not from the labour. It was a weight pressing down on her chest, that she couldn’t quite explain. Never before had she wished so fiercely that the father of the child she had carried into this life be beside her right now. Maybe that was why the rain came thrashing down upon the Ridge. Or maybe it was because fate knew before Charybdis did, that she would abandon this child too. The sin would be even greater still, because she would leave him alone, and she would leave him now.
And it would take the last of the untainted goodness in her and turn it dark as night.
Let it be known that there was a smile on her lips when she was waking to the sound of rain and the bleating cries of her son. And she meant to love him, with all that she was. But the moment her seeing eye settled on his tiny, perfect face, her blood ran and panic set in. Madly, she scrabbled away from him, carving great furrows in the sodden soil. He didn’t understand, poor, innocent thing, he didn’t understand, and he reached for her, desperate and longing. The featherlight brush of his narrow, velvet muzzle across her flank drew a cry to the lips of Charybdis, and though she was trembling from the cold (and from the horror that clawed its way out of the dark recesses of her heart) the touch of him burned like fire.
He blazed, so bright, even in the dimness of the dusk and the rainstorm, the red of white of him blinded her, so that even as she lurched, staggering to her muddied hooves, she crashed, squealing, into the unrelenting trunk of a tree that had stood as a sentinel over her, and had borne witness to her despicable deed. And he cried for her, oh how he cried. But Charybdis fled from him and all that he was, because of what he had been, in another life. One that had meant more to her than anything, but in a fit and mad and violent rage, Charybdis had brought him low.
And now those cold, cold eyes looked at her from a face that was young and new; a great and terrible love come back to haunt her.
She ran, screaming in despair and defiance, though her voice was swallowed up by the storm and the winds. Up her mountain, she raced, where no-one could follow (least of all a newborn colt, abandoned to the tempest. The skies above roared, and the earth beneath her roared, and from a distance, there came a third roar - the rivers, flooding their banks in a rage. Because of what she had done. (Because of what she hadn’t.) And something dangerous and primal stirred in her, when she felt the ground beneath her hooves rumble. So it was, in the dead-still silence that descended over the Ridge after the rain abated, Charybdis loosed a furious cry as the slope of the mountain in whose shadow she’d sought solitary safety so many times these past months, no longer solid and secure beneath her hooves, betrayed her and fell away, threatening to take her with it.
If any were hurt… Saoirse or Jabari, Skylla’s girl… Charybdis would not forgive. And she would not forget. And the mare, who had fallen to keeping herself apart from all that mattered to her, because she felt as though she were an abyss, and that if any got too close, she’d drown them (just like – )
And thus, it was not with misery but madness that she bellowed as the ground beneath her gave way, and swept her down the mountain and ever deeper into shadow.