Meadow

Everywhere she turned on the isles, change had pressed its thumb in the soft clay of her surroundings. But nowhere worse than Tinuvel’s Cove. Nowhere worse than the one place she’d ever been happy - a place that left her aching and empty when she looked out across it now. The flood of children she’d once played with had dried to a trickle, and the meadow where Sabriel had bedded them down each night was no longer the riot of color it’d once been. And Sephiroth was nowhere to be found in mountains, meadow, or glen. For a moment she’d thought she smelled him, standing where the sea met the shore. But the trail had led nowhere, and the spotted mare was finally forced to admit that she might have imagined it to begin with.

Wistfulness could deceive her senses, but it couldn’t conjure her other half out of Tinuvel’s cold, crisp air.

Lirael was quick to depart after confirming her twin’s absence, though there was a piece of her that was tempted to linger long enough to speak with Solomon. She knew now, of course, that the painted stallion was not her sire — but that did not remove the affection she felt for him. Still, there would be time enough to talk to him after she’d reunited with Sephiroth. Turning back to the sea, the coal-and-ivory woman made the long swim back to the Crossing. And then stood there on its shore for a long while, trying to unravel the island’s secrets and figure out where her brother had gone. Her green eyes distant, she stood with the hoof of her white hind leg resting lightly on the ground, letting the other three limbs bear the brunt of her weight.

She watched a gull gliding through the sky absently, listening to the waves murmur behind her. Feeling them tap at her heels as the tide rose, her thoughts traveling back to that first moment she’d come ashore at the Cove. And with a flash of insight that pushed the breath from her lungs, it occurred to Lirael that the scent she’d caught on Tinuvel’s beach might have been real. And if it was — if it was — then it could mean that Sephiroth was now living on one of the other islands. With a flick of her heels and a spray of sea-foam, the silver pintaloosa began to move inland, heading south in the direction of the Lagoon. Her strides lengthening as she crossed into the open space of the meadow, all but flattened out and racing in time to the excited thump of her heart—

And then, as abruptly as if a wall of stone had formed in her path, she stopped.

Lirael’s body still leaned subtly towards the south, a look of longing in her eyes, but cold logic had doused the initial wildfire of her excitement. At ten years old, her twin had likely outgrown the necessity of a bachelor herd. He could be anywhere — Atlantis, Luthien, Salem — and there was no way of being certain which island he’d claimed for his home. Dejected, she stood like a quartz statue that had been flecked and spattered with mud, wondering dimly if she should check the Lagoon regardless. Perhaps, like her, Sephiroth had never found his place in the world. She’d lingered with the band of mares on the mainland for years before Bondurant’s appearance had awakened her, and stayed in the company of her mother since.

Ten years of her life were gone, with nothing to be shown for them but the deceptive youth that her strange, solitary ways had lent her. At an age when most of her kind would be greeting their first (if not second or third) crop of grandchildren, Lirael remained untethered. And though she had never longed for such a life before, the absence of it — of purpose — threatened to suffocate her now.