The first spring without my sister had come and left quicker than I thought it would. Although in hindsight I suppose most seasons are like that; gone as soon as you’ve gotten used to them. To make things worse, each season passed with accelerating speed. It gave one the sensation of hurling through time, slinging faster and faster from one season to another. I wanted time to slow down, to stop, even to move in reverse. Tempus of course remained apathetic (and silent) to my desires.
I’ve never really enjoyed summer. It was too bright and bold, boring in its excess of sun and warmth. I liked the storms that came later in the season, when the heat rising off the southern sea came inland and collided with the cool mountain air-- the afternoons punctuated by lightning over the Arma, clouds dark and heavy with unexpressed rain. But it was earlier in the season and they hadn’t come yet. Instead there was an unpleasant blanket of warm air that sat low and still in the valley of Denocte. I’d take snow any day over that repressive heat.
(I had yet to be introduced to Solterra, where my appreciation for the heat would bloom in steely defiance of every expectation that it would wither.)
I was walking along the coast-- the breeze there the only respite from the heat of the court-- when I saw her, cresting a dune far enough away that her figure was broken by wavy lines of heat. Neither of us broke our onward march and I gradually was able to make out her striking face. Black, white, gold. It was that period of my life where I constantly compared myself to others, and constantly found myself lacking. My stomach clenched with envy and defiance. Furfur trotted at my side, closer to the ocean. When the waves came in he was up to his heels in water, to his great joy.
(I thought of my family, touching that same sea but a world away. Or where they so far they sailed a different ocean? At night were they even looking at the same stars?? I hoped so-- I did not know how they would find their way back otherwise…)
We both slowed to a halt at the same time. A breeze picked at our manes, blowing them rather dramatically away from the sea. “Hi,” I said, brimming with self-awareness (I refuse to call it self-consciousness, for it was not quite that). Kids my age always made me think and rethink too much. I desired their approval, and at the same time I resented them for it. She was pretty, which made everything a hundred times worse.
Furfur stood at my side, expressionless, sharp gaze fixed to the stranger. “Who are you?” I didn't mean for the question to come off as rude as it did. I sounded half feral, like it was wolves that raised me and not the earth. I llicked my lips, which felt suddenly very dry, and I did not smile even though I knew I was supposed to.
@Maret
