Meadow

Even without the certainty of his identity, it feels like the most natural thing in the world to fall into this stallion's embrace: to feel his voice reverberating in her chest while she quivers, quietly crying into his shoulder and clinging urgently to the frayed threads of her sanity. She hardly recognizes the weight of his words and the affection they hold; for her, this is a matter of survival, and he is her tether.

All the same, she cannot shake that lingering sense of familiarity: that weight, deep in her chest, that tells her of a long, scattered history they share. Somehow, in some way, he is someone important to her—or would have been, had the sands of time not kept them apart. Ylva's memories are distant, slipping through the crevices of her fragmented mind like fish in a reef. But they're there. She can feel it.

Then the stallion pulls away, and the absence of his solidness and warmth is like having the breath ripped from her lungs. He leads her from the sunset cliffs, and she follows close at his flank like a child: her head down, her thin body unsteady, and her glassy eyes fixed downwards as she focuses on putting one hoof in front of the other. She cannot say for how long they walk. All her senses are numb, her sobbing ceased but her face still sodden with tears.

They leave the brisk sea winds behind, and the dark, humid gloom of the forest swallows them. The stallion leads them to a small clearing lush with summer greenery and serene with privacy. Deep blue shadows shroud their bodies as they enter, and Ylva feels her nerves steadying a little with the scent of damp earth in her nostrils and the gentle caress of cool leaves on her skin. Yet still she feels so distant and weary in her own body, as if she were piloting it in her sleep.

She meets the stallion's eyes, her expression hollow and haunted, and looks at him for a long moment.

"Björn," she suddenly says, though her voice is flat and dream-like, devoid of all energy and joy. "After all this time."