Meadow

Blood. Blood and death.

These are the first things the pale girl tastes when she arrives into this world. The first hands to mold the clay of her being. Thrashing and wriggling to break the thin membrane that holds her prisoner, the filly takes her first breaths of the damp, heavy air. At the same moment, the dark woman who birthed her is gasping out her last, the air rattling in her lungs like soft peals of thunder. The white-masked face turns towards her, teeth bared and dark eyes rolling when she sees the dark seed that her womb has wrought. Mirri! The fear-deranged creature snarls, front legs clawing at the soil in a desperate attempt to escape the death-marked child. And that is how the shaman dies - blood streaking her coat like warpaint, her face twisted with horror, and the last ghost of a curse fading from her inky lips.

And that is how the child is found, coaxing the first — and last — meal she will win from her dam’s cold teats as twilight darkens the jungle into a terrible void.


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This’s jus’ for now, ‘kay. Understand?

Tabaxi understands. Even as a child, she’d known all too well the transience of life. Nothing lasts. Nothing can be taken for granted. And so she lives every moment in the tawny male’s company with bated breath, knowing that she will one day wake alone. But the spotted girl has never paused to consider that her solitude might come through her choices, her actions. She has always assumed that the end of their companionship will be marked by Nuka’s harsh words and sullen resentment. But when the moment finally comes, it comes in silence. It comes in the soft warmth of his body against hers as she is pulled abruptly from sleep, her curled white ears pitching forward so sharply that their tips brush against one another.

It comes as a dream, as a calling, as a need even more powerful than the deep-buried affection of the unlikely pair.

Rising gracefully beneath the half-lidded eye of the moon, Tabaxi leaves the sleeping boy behind her. She drifts south and east until the meadow thins into bare earth and then yields to the inevitability of the sea, pausing as if to reconsider her decision to leave. But there is no choice in this for the young seer; there has never been a choice in answering these strange, silent calls. Even the ache of her errant thoughts — that Nuka will wake to see her gone, that he might worry — is not enough to overpower the pull that tugs her forward again. Stepping into the sea, Nzingha’s daughter angles herself towards the distant shadow of Atlantis and begins to swim.

A fleeting worry — will Nuka be upset that she hadn’t said goodbye? — is dismissed almost as quickly as it arrives. She’ll be back tomorrow, and will make her apologies then.


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But hours become days, and days become seasons. The leopard-girl comes to understand how easy it is to fall into the pattern that she’d once shared with Nuka. It’s just for tonight, and then I’ll find someone to take her in. It’s just for a few days, until this storm passes and I know she'll be safe. It’s just for a season, until I can be certain this stranger won’t abandon her. And it’s a good thing she stays, because they do. Not that she has the bitterness in her to blame the poor, broken creature who’d nursed the ghostly child and then fled. There is no room in Tabaxi for the passing clouds of anger or the shadows of hatred. She has always embraced the light.

Innocent to her core, the fledgling shaman cannot recognize the dark mirror at her side for what it is. Mirri is not a savage creature, after all — not like the scarred, broken boy who’d once terrorized the Ridge’s crowd of children. While there might be moments where her anger consumes her, for the most part the pure-white filly is calm; impassive. No, empty. How can anything inside her be broken when it’s empty?

Tabaxi’s freckled lips pull into a frown, and she flicks her head once, quickly, as if to banish the thought. She has glimpsed the emptiness behind Mirri’s flat dark eyes, but cannot believe its cause to be anything more than the lingering trauma of her first hours. Surrounded as they are by reminders of that day, is it any wonder that she hasn’t recovered? Glancing beside her, Tabaxi sees the girl’s mouth curl into a rare smile, and follows her gaze. Together they watch an osprey pull out of its dive, heading west with its freshly-won meal. Mirri watches until the horizon claims it, leaning forward wistfully, her gently-curved ears quivering with excitement.

Is it possible that she might be feeling the same call that had brought the Marwari here? Tabaxi takes a reluctant step forward, glancing behind in time to see the weanling follow her eagerly. Another step, and another. In a familiar moment, the spotted mare feels her hooves leave the sand, feels the sea claim her. But this time, it is not her own call that she follows. This time, she does not arrive at the Crossing’s familiar shore alone and uncertain. This time she arrives with purpose in her thoughts, her pale blue eyes searching the Meadow’s sun-brittled grass for a glimpse of taupe fur and chocolate mane.

And her slender limbs carrying her, unknowingly, away from the child she’d given seasons of her life to protect.