Falls

Autumn hung thick like cobwebs in the air. She could smell it. Crisp like apples and bitter like cinnamon. These things were her secrets and she pressed them to her heart.

How long had she been gone? It was hard to tell. Saoirse felt an odd tingling on the tips of her slender ears. The Ridge was the last place she’d called home but it had fallen away when she lost Naenia一oh, she would say to herself, my bones are her bones and someday will be come back together. Someday was an eternity. The speckled mare had entered the great waters and washed ashore far away.

For a time it was enough but the subtle ache returned. Her homeland called her in the whisper of the winds and the dancing willow branches and she began to see signs in the rich red clay. Saoirse took back to the waters making land with a lathered neck, burning legs, and longing rooted deep in her belly.

The Falls had never been her haunt but their music pulled her, pushed her. She followed, quiet as a mouse until she came upon it. Could feel the droplets splash against her face. How beautiful, she thought, tilting her great pale gold head. Her eyes deep brown like heavy soil or cedar bark, watched carefully each horse who gathered near the rushing waters.

She notices a mare in particular. A lovely thing by all standards. Saoirse could not say if it was her beauty or something else一only that she could not stop her legs from carrying her towards the stranger.

“Hello, dear,” Saoirse said, her voice like moss or embers or sour cherries. Her muzzle extends only slightly to offer a friendly greeting. “You look troubled. I couldn’t help noticing,” a pause long enough to gather thoughts like dandelion seeds, “your face looks so sad.”

Your face, she wants to say, it makes me feel a deep sorrow in my own self. It makes me long for my bones wherever they might be.