Falls

Long and lonely he had wandered, choosing to stay when Lysandra felt called to move on, beyond the islands. Her father had died on the mountain, and Nike’s mother had lived on it. He stayed, feeling in himself that his soul was bound to the Peak, though thus far, knowing only the fringes of who his mother had been, he sought to know only the valleys and lowlands that were touched by the mountain’s shadow.

He knew each wandering trail that stretched like rivers from the stone monolith. Nike himself felt made of stone, cold and ageless, slowly shaped and worn by the passage of time, just as the cliffs of the sea to the north were shaped and worn by the waves.

And in the deep winter his mother’s mountain, around which he danced alone to the rhythm of his beating heart, the crown of stone that scraped the sky was dusted with snow. Winter had come upon the lone stallion too, flecking his midnight hide through with grey. When shed his sparse winter coat, the lightness never left him.

Just like the memory of the scent trail he followed never had either.

He’d been little more than a weanling, the last he’d set his obsidian eyes upon the lean dark figure, browsing alone in the clearing, but Nike would know him anywhere. The silver haired male wore an impassive mask, but when he spoke, there was no trace of resentment (all impurities were washed away by the rains), only a fragile vein of curiosity. “What brought you back this time?” There was no sense of expectation, nor a desire to stake claim upon his father’s life. Nike was grown now. He hadn’t needed anyone for some time. He stood apart, resolute in the manner of a monument to the mountain that he loved in a way that could not be explained.

Devotion ran deep in him, like the roots of the mountain, to the marrow of his bones, so that his blood hummed with it.