TORIELLE
It's only me who wants to wrap around your dreams
The depth of his apologies fell on deaf ears, the mare too consumed by her own assumptive emotions. Her audits were pinned back against her skull, the sweep of her tail flicking behind her not unlike an annoyed cat. She eyed him in her periphery as he bowed, a sign of remorse and respect. The anger wavered for just a moment. Maybe she had been too harsh. Is this the kind of turmoil the Sages had once tried to warn her against? Had her halted studies, her sparse meditations, resulted in this explosive display?
Shame rolled over her like a crashing wave and her stance relaxed some, her ears pulling to attention as she turned to look at him, silver quivering through her antlers and across her body. An apology rested on the tip of her tongue when he continued to speak.
Torielle wrestled with a response to him. While he had apologized as deeply as she was sure that he was capable, he again presented the information that they were somehow fated. While the concept was anything but foreign to her, the manner in which he had approached her left her feeling vulnerable in a way she did not appreciate. Had Gaia truly abandoned her to the favour of other gods? The last two years of aching void had been a testament to that thought. This stallion, this Jarek sure seemed to think that she was chosen by his desert deities for some kind of greatness.
While she couldn’t deny there was a not insignificant part of her that appealed to, she was incredibly wary. Who would snub their nose at a chance for great change, to belong to something more than them? For some it would equal power, and while that was not something that called to the mare, the idea of being a source for others, a fount of knowledge, of peace, of better living… She shook her head in a crude attempt to clear the images from her mind. Children’s beliefs. One did not simply accept strange prophecies at face value these days.
And yet, there was a certain synchronicity to the event. Her recent call to teach and nurture others, that he had come to her while she had been in a personal reverie of home. The most obvious, and most troubling similarity had to be his appearance, though. The stallion’s great height, his strength, the colour of his coat. If she had seen him less clearly, her heart would have leapt from her chest. Jarek really did look all too much like her father. Was that a sign, then? As she was reminiscing of home, this stallion would approach her and speak of great prophecies?
As she struggled with how to continue, the silence stretched between them. She was no longer angry with him, but wary, concerned. If this chance encounter had indeed been foretold to the brute, what did that mean for her? The implications were far too numerous and distressing for her to want to work through them here.
“If we truly are fated,” She said suddenly, the discomfort overwhelming now. She was too exposed, and too many things had been brought into question. “Then I am sure we are fated to meet again.”
The mare quickly turned on her heels, tossing her head over her shoulders. “Goodbye, Jarek; stranger and prophesizer.” The woman then went about her departure, heart pounding like a chorus of drums in her chest as she hoped that he would not follow her. She would need to think about this encounter, and all that it would mean, alone.
art by the-day-of-shadow character by scapeh table by sunny
