Falls

The earth was drowned. Everywhere leaves and twigs and petals had been torn from their homes and dashed upon water-logged ground; everywhere swathes of grass were hidden under veritable lakes of muddy brown water, as if it had rained for weeks without stopping. It was not the land the young mare remembered.

It did not stop her. Still so fresh from the ocean that her legs trembled and her nostrils stung from salt and her tawny-and-white coat was dark and slick but not from the incessant rain, Sabah roved the land like a kelpie, power-walking with her head down and her ears back against the wind, making no move toward any shelter unless it happened to be in her path. Her mind was singularly focused on one thing: to find him. To find her boy. To prove to herself he was not lost forever.

To not let the memory of her mother down.

Finally she paused near the lee of a hill jagged with rocks and twisted trees. The ground rumbled, and not from the tempest that assaulted the land. Her nose caught the faint, refreshing scent of fresh water just before the wind tore it away again, and that was enough to awaken the animal in her: the creature that urgently needed food, drink, and rest. She hesitated, torn between the needs of her body and her fervent mission. The threatening lump of a sob rose in her throat, and she swallowed against it.

Then she relented. Her hooves took her over squelching ground, past swelling puddles and fallen tree limbs and along the hint of a desire path carved by thousands of hooves over hundreds of years. Horses had made this, she realized as the trees opened into a wide, sheltered tunnel that skirted around the hill; it was not narrow or delicate enough to be the work of deer. Hope burned in her chest, a boon against the fear and grief that clawed at her, not unlike the shivering, windblown tree limbs that encircled her path.

Finally the wide basin of the waterfall appeared before her, the surface dancing and rippling beneath the rain. Blowing water from her nostrils, Sabah scrabbled over a few large, slick rocks to the edge of the veil itself; she was so close that spray from it spattered at her, but it hardly made a difference given the work the rain had already done. She drank deeply, eagerly, then pulled her head back to scour the far edges of the pool with weary mismatched eyes blinking against the rain and waterfall spray. Nothing. Her gaze rose to the angry grey clouds above. She could not say what time of day it was, or how long it had been since she left. Her gaze dropped again. There — half hidden by trees, strolling away from her: a horse.

"Excuse me!" Sabah called, her salt-raw throat aching with the effort as she carefully picked her way past the slick rocks and began rounding the edges of the pond. "Excuse me! Could you point me to some shelter?" The trees, blown half-naked and swaying like a reverent chorus, would hardly suffice in this weather.