and a broken laugh, and a thousand memories, and not a single regret
His lungs had never been the same. No, they had never filled with air like the lungs of his youth, like the lungs of not-so-long-ago. They could not hold the atmosphere like they used to, and it had been long enough that Toro knew they never would. They were no longer his lungs, as he knew them, but new ones, as he would have to know them. For the most part, they were functional. They would never be good enough for him.
We never know what we have until it’s gone.
Air, food, water, even…companionship. Loathe as he was to say it, Anzhelo had become somewhat of a comforting, if not intermittent, and often disconcerting, presence in his life. Isra, too, had left her mark on his heart and he wanted to hate it. He wanted to hate everyone that was ever nice to him. He wanted to strike them down, Anzhelo and Isra and Seraphina, Elif and Caine and Eik. It was not about whether they offered kindness or rivalry. It was that they made him feel anything at all. El Toro sought to dictate when this permission was given and when it was denied. It seemed that he never had a choice; his heart opened and closed the door, and it was never at the right time.
It was in this vast and horrible desert that he meditated now, having been in Solterra long enough to know it, and having learned it partially out of necessity. One could flee to its edges and no guard of Raum’s would pursue. It was simply too dangerous. He was assumed a dead man.
The rebels fed Hajduk, as promised. He was growing, always growing, a lithe and strong lion, white as Toro, blinding in the sunlight and powerful. They spoke most frequently when Toro was spiraling in his own head; it was then that Hajduk intervened with something crude or comforting or distracting. He was good for the white stallion, but like a friend, Toro could hardly admit it.
The mare caught him off guard, as was the way of others and Toro, even in an empty expanse he buried his conscious self under layers of thought and feeling. Hajduk alerted him first, shaking him from the swirling reflection of the past and present. Toro neared her and she spoke. Rather outgoing, and from what he still considered quite a distance.
”Good day. I am called Maerys.”
Toro waited until they were a more conversational length apart. ”Hey. I’m Toro.” She was young, and small. Hajduk rumbled. ”This is Hajduk.” He looked her over a moment. There was beauty there, warrior’s muscles on a childlike frame that rang familiar. ”You a soldier?”
@Maerys | Fiddler Jones
"What I say,"
What I think,
What Hajduk thinks,
