Falls

but i was not blind;

Claret startles when the other mare speaks, whipping her head up quickly and glancing back behind her. It’s another mare, pretty golden-red with white on her stomach. Seeing another female lets Claret relax some - the tension that had overtaken every single inch of her body slowly bleeds out, leaving Claret deflated. She lets out a shaky breath, pushes down the panic threatening to creep it’s way across her vision, send her gaze black at the edges and her breaths coming short.

After the panic comes the embarrassment, and Claret wants to kick herself – can’t help the torrent of self-flagellation currently spinning through her brain. Just a polite stranger, not even up in her space and she got nervous. How is she ever going to survive out in the world? Taking a slow, steadying breath, Claret forces herself to focus; the mare spoke, she didn’t just walk up and stand there. They're side by side now, gazing into the same puddle and Claret can feel her heart trying to beat out of her chest but she doesn’t move. Both of them stare into the water for a moment,before shegives in and looks up, slowly slipping to curious as the shock of her surprise wears off.

Claret offers a tentative smile to the mare in return and huffs out an embarrassed breath, wincing a bit at being caught out. She hadn’t thought anyone heard her talking to herself like she’d gone crazy. But the teasing she expects doesn’t come, just a kind reassurance. It settles the last of the roiling anxiety in her gut, and Claret meets the striking mismatched gaze of the other mare, suddenly self-conscious of her own plain brown eyes.

“Probably better with someone I don’t know,” Claret agrees hesitantly. Perhaps it should feel odd, contemplating baring her soul to a complete stranger, sharing thoughts and fears that Claret would never want any of her family to hear. But the offer, the idea of bleeding the poison and then pretending it never happens? There’s an appeal there, and it kindles hope. She laughs then a little, and if this were someone she knew Claret would shift her weight, bump their shoulder in a tease.

But she resists the urge to be overly familiar and instead offers, “My younger brother - he’s building a family; mares, children. Falling in love.” She pauses then, trying to articulate the strange void inside of her, trying to figure out how to explain this when she isn’t even sure she entirely understands it herself.

Claret exhales and then shifts uncomfortably before continuing on, in a soft voice spoken more to the water than to the other mare, “And I should want that, right? Because everyone wants that. Hell, her half-sister Hael wants it so bad she’s demanded their father find her somewhere to go. Her parents wanted it so badly they ripped one another to shreds, in the end only ruining their own hearts. “But I don’t.” Not since Isik took her, certainly. And before that? Even as a girl, when she imagined her future, Claret imagined herself happy in the Prairie for the rest of her days. Not with a stallion in some foreign land making her miserable, fighting for a crumb of attention and devoting herself to him when he had fifteen other mares at his beck and call. Not with a gaggle of children, left alone to rear them, relegated to the role of mother for the rest of her life.

“I used to blame it on being held hostage - my first meeting with a stallion outside my family, and he beats my father nearly to death and kidnaps me. I’m still pretty sure my Uncle killed him and the Queen of the Hills because of me. I know my family fractured because of me; my mother will never come home, and I have a sister I will never meet.” Now that the words are coming, Claret cannot seem to make them stop. Like lancing a wound, the poison drains and what is done cannot be undone. “But if I’m honest with myself? I never wanted that life - the life my siblings and friends all want. I don’t want to be one more nameless mare in a herd; I don’t want to be second choice. What does love like that do, other than rot you from the inside out?”

She thinks of her mother, so proud and angry and hurt, she thinks of her father, so hopeful and desperate and infatuated. She thinks of how they broke one another right in front of her eyes. Claret doesn’t ever, ever want to be that. Better alone than to leave your heart in the hands of someone else; better alone than accepting less than you need, because it’s what everyone else does.

She glances up to the mare, a little wild-eyed after her vulnerable rant and adds in a mutter, “See? Broken.”

claret