Falls

For a long moment, Litae simply listened. The waterfall. The wind moving through the trees. The soft rhythm of her own breathing.

She hadn’t expected to reclaim the peace that she’d known so quickly.

It wasn’t the absence of grief. Ares was still gone, and she suspected a part of her would always cling to him. But standing beneath the Falls - listening to the water's endless song - the ache no longer felt quite so sharp. Because here, at last, the world reflected the certainty he had always carried. Here, his hope breathed life into the very air that surrounded her.

How could she not stand here and feel the same sort of hope for herself?

The songs of the frogs at night are better than what you have now.

The voice was so unexpected that Litae’s heart leapt against her ribs. With a soft oh! of exclamation, she opened her eyes to look at the red stallion. A few breaths passed before the meaning of what he’d said sank in - like softly falling snow, the words separated themselves from his voice one by one.

“Frogs?” Litae repeated with a gentle sort of skepticism. “The closest I’ve ever heard to their singing was the time my brother tried to swallow half an apple.” She shook her head, smiling affectionately at the memory of him gasping and coughing until it’d finally cleared his throat. She’d called him a glutton, and he’d laughed that warm laugh that seemed to exist for her alone.

She hadn’t expected to hear herself laugh again, but suddenly there it was. A soft giggle that chased the memory as it faded, leaving her standing beside a stranger.

Litae returned the red dun’s smile, and the soft planes of her face softened more.

“It’s like a dream,” she answered with the sort of sincerity that one normally reserved for friends. “I am called Litae, and I’m new to this place. Have you lived here your whole life, Alo?”

It was the sort of question one might ask during the ritual of niceties two strangers often observed. But there was genuine interest in the way her ears pitched forward, waiting to hear Alo’s response. If her arrival here felt like a dream, meeting the stallion should have felt like encountering a creature of myth. But for a creature who called paradise home, he seemed just as unassuming as she.

And more than anything, that left her wanting to know more.