until the lion learns how to write

Lakota had departed from the Inlet shortly after she'd found what little peace there was to be had there. If she had learned nothing else from that insolent filly's presence at such a sacred place, it was that nothing lasted forever. Not even Warsaw's influence, once inescapable on these isles, was safe from the erosion of time. It was also obvious that she had no one else to live for, either. Both of her mothers were gone, her father, grandfather. The sisters she'd know. The aunts she'd called her own.

She was well and truly alone.

The thought left her feeling empty inside, as if someone had scooped out the very essence of who she was and what she stood for and left her standing there like a shell. There was no one left in this world to care about her. Not her fails. Not her successes. Nothing. She had no one.

Apart from, perhaps, Bacardi.

Lakota could not call their relationship close. She'd been too consumed with her own goals and mistrusts to cultivate anything deeper with him, and he'd been too polite to pry. She still didn't know if this represented a lack of interest on his part of if that was truly just his way of trying to respect her. Either way, he was the only soul still left on the islands - if he was left on the islands - that even knew her name or might have any interest in seeing her again.

The sudden thought that he might not even be in the Forest anymore made her throat grow tight with panic, and she hastened her pace through the cold winter ocean. She had to have someone left. He had to still be there. She needed him to be there.

She surged on land as she arrived and called out with him, her voice more urgent than she had intended it to be. Embarrassment filled her cheeks with heat but she called again anyway, stumbling on tired limbs into the trees, seeking their shelter to warm herself up before she froze to death. "Bacardi?" She called out, brown eyes half-wild with the sudden, soul-deep fear that he was not here. That he didn't exist. That she was wholly alone, for now and for forever. "Bacardi!"

young mare // Mutt // gray // 15 hh