life's but a walking shadow
It is in the quiet following the summit—after Florentine has come upon their group from behind, informing them that the regimes are free; after the crush of weary, curious horses has swept its way back down the mountainside toward the four courts—that Indra seeks out the painted mare.
I remember you, the mare had whispered, and the hair along Indra’s spine had risen, and her mind had filled with ghosts. Here, in the sunlit forest clearing, the paint could not be anything but real. But the last time the unicorn had seen her, wrapped in smoke and moonlight—
A different lifetime. A different horse, Indra might have thought, were the blood-marks on the pale mare not so impossible to forget.
There had been no time, then, to respond. Indra’s golden eyes had lifted to meet those of the not-quite-stranger, and only their fraction’s widening had betrayed her recognition. Then it was back to straining against boulders, back to sharpening her blade.
Now, though—Indra goes to where the mare stands on a small rise amidst the rubble, surveying what remains of the crowd. Even in silence the paint looks like a battle-cry, her mane streaming behind her. The dark blazes across her eyes make her seem fierce, and watchful, though Indra doubts she would be any less so without them.
“Your friends did well,” Indra says, her voice low as she steps up to take a place beside her. She does not know the lightning unicorn, or the blood-colored stallion with his tail like a scythe, but she had seen the kinship between the three of them, the invisible net of gestures and glances that bound them close. She does not need to ask whether they, too, had come through from the rift. “The gods might play their games with us, but they will know, now, that we are ready for them. They will not forget that we are waiting, and we are angry, and we are strong.”
Her gaze drifts over the last few remaining horses winding their way down along the mountain, and she cannot help but wonder where each one is headed, what each one must think. Did the regimes reach an accord here, under the thumb of the gods? Would the courts have peace?
Or was this just one more injustice, one more act of violence, one more catalyst for suffering and strife?
The unicorn glances again at her companion, at the powerful stillness of the mare. Indra wonders what has brought her here—what purpose she might chase. She herself has been so lacking in direction, lately, and she gives a restless stamp of a hoof, the iron drawing sparks from the stone beneath them. “What will you do now?”
i n d r a
@Shrike <3
