Falls

Once upon a time, Sabah had been someone else. Fresh on the islands, raging with hormones, and fragile with grief, she had fallen for the first handsome face that had paid her any attention. The memory of his fair green-eyed features framed by tall yellow flowers was burned into her memory like a brand, and it had haunted her, dogging her trail long after his scent had been washed from her body. She could have had a future with him, but instead she had fled like a coward, the knowledge she likely carried his child having stirred a deep-rooted terror that had seized her bones and not let her rest until there was an ocean between them.

Only after, when the shame of what she had done burned her cheeks as she lay sleepless at night, had she realized she was becoming her mother. Forever running, claiming to have a wanderer's curious spirit but in reality, simply terrified of the shackles of being settled. Was this what she wanted? To be ruled by fear? No, she decided. But equally she could not return. To face what she had done, to face Masamune, was an unbearable prospect. Let him move on and forget her existence. Let him forget Dawn.

To fully shed her identity had never been the plan — it had fallen into her lap, piece by piece. Nice to meet you, I'm Sabah, she had impulsively told a stranger one inconsequential day, as if the risk that word of her whereabouts would get back to Masamune was at all high. There had been others, too: Miriana, Daisy, Layla. But Sabah, the name her mother had nearly given her, stuck. It had been too easy to lie, and the lies were comfortable, stretching around her like protective dome.

Meanwhile, to her son Abraxas, once he was born, she was Mama. In her head, she was still Dawn. But the day young Brax, having been too little to remember the days she ever went by anything but Sabah, called her by that name, she knew she had dug her own grave. She could not confuse her son. From then on, Dawn was laid to rest.

Sabah had resolved to never return to the Islands, instead living her life as a wanderer with Abraxas, showing him all the magical places her mother had shown her when she was a filly. Perhaps once he was grown, he would want to settle somewhere and start his own herd, and then Sabah would at last settle too. She would have a real home with the colt that was the most important thing on earth for her.

Then, one day shortly after he turned two, Abraxas simply left with no word, leaving Sabah alone with only a hunch as to where he had gone. And so she had been forced to return to the place she had been set on avoiding.

It was only her luck that her very first day back, the first horse she ran into would be him. Not her son, but the one who had given her a son at all.

When he turned his green gaze on her, Sabah beheld his rain-drenched countenance and sucked in a breath. Every muscle in her body froze — every muscle but her heart, which threw itself against its cage like a rabbit caught in a snare. Her mind raced. She did not know whether to turn and flee back into the maelstrom or whether to carry on pretending she was someone else. With mismatched eyes she blinked away the rain and studied the stallion's face for any trace of recognition, but she could not be sure one way or another.

All this transpired within the space of a few seconds before Sabah dropped her head, breaking eye contact, and on trembling legs pushed past Masamune with a muttered, "Thank you." They were the words of a stranger — or, at least, those of someone who hoped they could still pass as one.