There is something about running that makes me feel connected to the past. It’s almost like touching a very old object- the moment you reach out and feel, inexplicably, how someone else stood as you did, touching it as you did. It is the realization that there’s nothing between you and anyone else except time, and time is not as substantial as it often seems. Surely part of this gravity, for me, stems from my magic-- it has taught me that every touch leaves a story behind, unknown and unseen but there, lying in wait for the right person (me) to unveil it.
There is an unwritten history of everything, remembered by walls and roads and objects, carved invisibly into the whirls of time by which we mark the passing of age.
But there is a different history too, one that lives in the flesh.
When I run I think of my ancestors, of all the mares and stallions who came before me. There must be hundreds of thousands of things, physical and mental, to distinguish us. But we have all run like this, at one point or another; in sport or play or either side of the hunt, we are runners. It is in our blood and bones and spirit, this motion. This heaving of the chest and swinging of legs. This knowing we can run until it kills us.
This knowing we happily will, given a reason.
That night as I leapt over the flames and raced through the smoke, I felt my forebears with me. Every panting breath, every deep inhale of smoke, every aching stride forward. The pain in my limbs was theirs, the accomplishment theirs.
At the end, it did not matter if I won or lost. I had travelled very far since the start of the race; victory was not relative to anyone but myself. And I did it, I did it; I crossed the finish line with my lungs burning and my legs about to turn to jelly.
And it was for them, it was all for them. I think they would be proud; but when I turned to the smoke at my heels, which had prior been so full of voices and laughter and life, there was no one there.
@Official Dawn Account Thank you so much, I loved this <3
