Tangled in his woes, Zevulun hardly took note of the approach of another horse, only stirring once Larka’s voice quietly probed the silence. One ear flicked toward her and Zevulun wrestled with the shame of being seen like this and the need for comfort when he felt so alone. Larka herself brought even more… complications to the matter. He both wanted to tell her to go and sigh with relief at the sight of her.
Zevulun opened his eyes and knew they would betray him with their watery shine as he looked up into her sweet face filled with concern. Can I join you? He exhaled a heavy breath and gave a small nod, groaning as he shifted his body a little to give her room to comfortably sink down beside him. He tried not to pay as much mind to the exaggerated curve of her belly and the confusing feelings it often filled him with to see it.
The silence stretched on as he enjoyed the warmth her body offered and, for a moment, it might’ve seemed like he wasn’t going to speak. Then, finally, his deep voice cracked through the chilled air, ragged with emotion and heavy the same way his soul felt. “I’m sorry you’re seeing me like this…” He started, “I just needed some time to compose myself before I returned to the herd.”
He knew that wouldn’t answer the big question hanging in the air of what could have happened to bring him down to the ground like this. But even he wasn’t sure how he was supposed to answer that. It felt like the most ridiculous situation ever. Why was he crumpled on the ground crying after seeing Mariael doing well, as a mother, and wanting to talk with him?
“My mother left me when I was young. Still needing milk, just barely able to sustain myself through foraging… My older sisters Mariael and Maziel took me under their wing. They’d both lost their mother’s young too, so we shared that together. Then we lost our father the winter after, when he went to lead wolves from the caves we were sheltering in during a storm. I wasn’t even a year-old, yet. So then it was just us three… We did alright for ourselves, especially under Mariael’s watchful eye.
Our father had given her leadership of the Bay when she was young, and after he disappeared she named herself the island’s queen. I supported her leadership, despite not always agreeing with the choices she made. I didn’t care, I was happy not to be the one who had to make those decisions. I was young, but I already had a small herd of my own… the first mare I ever loved…”
He trailed off, watching the last wisps of white drift from his lips and up into the open air. “Then, the same age our twin boys were when I lost my mother, Avalon disappeared too. Worse, our first child, my first child, was gone with her. A few weeks later our aunt showed up at our shores and told us our father had been alive the entire time we thought he was dead, but he was living in a small valley a day’s distance from the Mainland shore. She was trying to convince him to return to the islands, but he kept refusing. He had told her to never tell us where he was, but she was breaking that promise in the hopes we could go get him and convince him to come home.”
Oswin had seemed so hopeful. Maziel was quick to dance forward and agree, even despite her fear of the ocean, wanting to leave immediately so they could see him again. Zevulun had shared his sister’s excitement, moving for the shallows of the tide with his heart racing. It was the first time since he had lost Avalon that he had felt something akin to hope. If after all this time his father was alive, maybe one day he would find Avalon and Izizel again, too.
Mariael had been strangely quiet, but she had still come with them when they beckoned her to follow.
“It was worse than we thought… he’d been injured in the fight with the wolves, gruesomely.” His father had been a skeletal thing, one-eared and one-eyed. The sight of him had unsettled Zevulun, almost making him wish he hadn’t brought his young sons with them to see their grandfather. “But he was still alive, even if he was angry our aunt had brought us to him.”
He went quiet as his thoughts darkened, knowing what it was that came next. “My sister Mariael was always so explosive with her anger, and that day was no different. Despite the fact it was clear he couldn’t fight a strong breeze, she tore after him when he didn’t express remorse for hiding away for all those years. He’d made a promise to her that she’d never have to lead the Bay alone, and she just…” She’d snapped. “She couldn’t listen to reason any more. I tried to get between her and him twice, but she even kicked and bit at me, driving me away from intervening. He wouldn’t fight back, he just… let her… and then he fell and there was a weird sound and then… then he went still… and Mariael fell down beside him and she… the cry that came out of her mouth, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything so heartbreaking…” Except maybe the cry that’d come out of his when he was alone in his and Avalon’s cave, processing that she was truly gone.
“Eventually we started back toward the islands, but Mariael stopped us and said she wouldn’t be returning, that our blood shouldn’t be on the islands any more. At the time… I was in shock… I didn’t argue… but the longer we traveled the Mainlands the more angry and withdrawn she became. She was a volatile thing, often exploding into fights with us… I didn’t know what to do any more… It took years but eventually, I couldn’t take it. I wanted to come back to the islands. I… I had started to come out of whatever fog of grief I had been stuck in, and I felt like an aimless ghost out there, just full of questions and regret. Mariael was infuriated that I wanted to come back and we… fought. Worse than we ever have… When she realized she couldn’t physically strike me as hard she tried to hurt me verbally. I… fired right back at her. I had years of pent up rage to express and it all came out, every ugly, horrible thing I thought of her. How much I would never forgive her for taking our father from us because she couldn’t properly express herself unless she was fighting. She wouldn’t stop, but she was so weak, she hadn’t been eating as much, she’d stopped caring for herself. She was… no match for me.
She fell, I’d shoved her hard enough, but I was so angry at her I… couldn’t stop. I was still snapping, biting at her, angry... I can’t ever remember being so angry… It was finally our other sister’s cries breaking through that made me realize where I was and what I’d done. Mariael had just been letting me beat her into the dirt, she’d stopped attacking me shortly after crumpling to the ground. I was… disgusted with myself and even more disgusted when she pointed out we weren’t so different… I could have killed her then just like she killed our father… I swear it was like she wanted me to.”
Zevulun swallowed tightly. A few tears had bubbled to the lines of his pale eyes as he spoke and they brushed down his cheeks in wet lines, but it was cathartic to tell someone all these quiet woes he kept to himself.
“I left for the islands shortly after that… My sister Maziel wouldn’t come with me and leave Mariael, but I wasn’t surprised. Those two were inseparable long before I even existed. Or so I always thought… My sister is back on the islands. Both of them. Maziel is living in the Bay… Mariael is in the Arch… I went to find her and tell her to get Maziel out of the Bay, that stallion Fell is making enemies all over the island and I don’t want her to get caught in the crosshairs. I…” He trailed off for a moment, then gave his head a small shake before he sighed, “I thought the next time I saw Mariael, I’d like to try and talk to her, maybe repair what’d gone wrong between us. Have my sister again… but every time I thought about that, I was thinking of my prideful sister who was always too good to listen to anyone other than herself… She wasn’t… she was different. She asked me if we could talk about what had happened… if I would come visit her…
And I made some half-assed excuse, brushed her off, told her I didn’t want to talk about it, and left as quickly as I could…” His ears flicked back, irritated at himself. “I feel like such a coward.”
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