Falls

The slender shadow watched them laughing and playing from afar — a starving woman who could only look and never taste.

For Sabriel, true happiness had always skirted just beyond her reach. In the beginning she had sought it, chased it, grasped for it. She’d even glimpsed it briefly in Bondurant’s embrace, dreamt of it in the delicious warmth of Solomon's touch. If she’d only known then which path to take — if she’d only made a choice — then it could have been hers. Instead, she’d teetered uncertainly between the pair, like a piece of flotsam caught in two opposing tides. And for her inability to break one of their hearts, the silver black instead broke all three. Solomon’s. Bondurant’s… and her own.

In the wake of her destruction, Sabriel withdrew into herself. With time and loneliness she’d eventually let Rafe tempt her from her solitude, but the life she’d built in his home proved as hollow as the promises he’d made to her. There was no escape there, no absolution, and no peace. Only the vast expanse of bare stone and the relentless company of her own thoughts, circling through her mind like vultures over carrion. And when she’d finally managed to peel back the dark layers of the stallion's lies, it was met with a rush of relief. Relief that there was nothing to bind her to the existence she’d carved out in the Badlands. That she was free to chase the happiness her heart ached for beyond the cold veil of this life.

And then— Resurfacing briefly into the present, the sable mare turned towards the Falls, her sea-blue eyes skimming its pebbled shore. Filling its empty shadows with his light. Remembering the pale pink of his lips against the darkness of her skin. The winter sky of his eyes against the white snow of his face. Filling the silence with the warmth of his voice. Oh, and I’m Zevulun, by the way. Since you already know every piece of my heart, you may as well know what name to remember me by. He’d seemed to know her heart, too, even before they’d spoken. Well enough to understand what her intentions were in coming to the Falls that night. Well enough to stop her from following her lover into death. Well enough to extract a promise from her — one that she’d vowed to herself she would not keep.

Come to me. When you need someone who knows what you’ve gone through. Someone to stand with you in this place. Someone who understands. Come to me in the Prairie.

But she had. In a moment of weakness, Sabriel had run to him. She’d been a body’s breadth from Zevulun, a single moment from giving him everything that she was. Until the concern in his gaze reminded her of why she’d stayed away. Glancing one last time about the Prairie, the striped woman had drank in the peace of the place — and imagined that peace shattered by the scream of Rafe's challenge. Imagined Zevulun’s creamy coat stained with blood. And with a broken sound, she’d turned and fled back into the sea, swimming blindly until Atlantis loomed green and alien before her.

As the opposite of everything that the stallion held in his home, the Ridge was an ideal haven. And though she hadn’t found happiness there, Sabriel did find purpose. Treading the boundary between jungle and mountains, she’d stumbled across the strange spotted yearling and her newborn charge. It didn’t take long for her body to respond to the filly’s need, or for her heart to ache with memories of Lirael and Sephiroth every time she suckled. Even so, she might have stayed with the girl for a long time — longer than was wise, longer than she would be needed — if not for the faint traces of Rafe’s scent that found her one day. Driven mindless with panic, the silver-haired mare abandoned her foster child and left Atlantis altogether, returning to the only place that had ever felt like home.

Because here in the Crossing, Sabriel could visit with the ghosts of those she loved.

She’d haunted the meadow earlier, chasing Bondurant’s spotted form through the trees. Watching the sea with Solomon while they reflected quietly on Uriah’s brief life. But darkness always found the slender woman here in the Falls, standing beside the pool and staring into its churning waters. A part of Sabriel always wondered what might have been if she’d given Zevulun more than the promise she’d made. For the hours they’d spent together, the silver black had felt whole — if she’d stayed with him, would the ache of her regrets have faded until they were forgotten? Or would they have grown as they did with Solomon — grown until they formed a chasm that could not be bridged, no matter how hard she tried?

Solomon. Bondurant. Clinging to her memories and the grief that they wrought, she closed her eyes and exhaled her breath in a soft sigh. In truth, Sabriel had given up on happiness the same day that she’d broken her heart... and theirs. And if it came to her willingly now, she would only do what she’d been doing since her children had moved on. Since she’d exiled herself to the Crossing and solitude. She would do the same that she’d done in the Prairie those seasons ago, with Zevulun’s hopeful eyes drinking her in as desperately as a man who was dying of thirst.

If happiness found her here now, dozing beneath the Fall’s star-strewn sky, then she would run from it.