my spirit's veering flight
like swallows under evening skies.
like swallows under evening skies.
The other mare does not say yes but she does not have to. Yes, she thinks, Yes, she flies. Yes, yes, yes. And Samaira cannot think, cannot breathe, and her lungs are not getting enough oxygen and her vision is strange, in the night. Darker, blurrier. She thinks… she thinks she might pass out, as she stands there in the shadows and the moonlight and looks at a flying pegasus through silver eyes. In her shocked panic, the earthen woman stretches her wings without thinking, that they might prevent her from falling, and she wrenches on the wing with the arrow stuck through it, grinding wood to bone.
A cry escapes her lips, and she feels herself crumbling, down, down to her knees on the slippery swamp floor. Samaira tucks her nose to her chest and breathes. In, out, in out, over and over again, her head swimming, her heart beating, drowning, drowning, drowning in black.
How long does she stay there, curled up against truth that sits just outside her reach, against the shadow pain ricocheting through her, against the lingering fear she has, like a rabbit running for its life. She is not in her homeland anymore. Somehow… somehow she was shot out of the sky and landed in a place completely different from that which she should have landed on, where she should have been imprisoned and most likely put to death.
She should be dead, right now.
But she is not.
Slowly, Samaira unfurls like her wings might on a breeze. She shudders still, a constant shivering over the surface of her skin, but she controls her breathing and manages to prevent the vignette of darkness on the edges of her vision from closing in. She does not stand, and she knows she must be covered in foul, thick mud, but instead she just lifts her head and looks at the woman in front of her, who is sharp edges and eyes like the blade of a knife, and she only has one thing to ask.
“Where am I?” and her voice is a quivering, whispery thing on her tongue and her lips, and she is both afraid of what the answer might be and hoping that it is true. That she is here, and here is not the place where she would be hunted and killed.
A cry escapes her lips, and she feels herself crumbling, down, down to her knees on the slippery swamp floor. Samaira tucks her nose to her chest and breathes. In, out, in out, over and over again, her head swimming, her heart beating, drowning, drowning, drowning in black.
How long does she stay there, curled up against truth that sits just outside her reach, against the shadow pain ricocheting through her, against the lingering fear she has, like a rabbit running for its life. She is not in her homeland anymore. Somehow… somehow she was shot out of the sky and landed in a place completely different from that which she should have landed on, where she should have been imprisoned and most likely put to death.
She should be dead, right now.
But she is not.
Slowly, Samaira unfurls like her wings might on a breeze. She shudders still, a constant shivering over the surface of her skin, but she controls her breathing and manages to prevent the vignette of darkness on the edges of her vision from closing in. She does not stand, and she knows she must be covered in foul, thick mud, but instead she just lifts her head and looks at the woman in front of her, who is sharp edges and eyes like the blade of a knife, and she only has one thing to ask.
“Where am I?” and her voice is a quivering, whispery thing on her tongue and her lips, and she is both afraid of what the answer might be and hoping that it is true. That she is here, and here is not the place where she would be hunted and killed.
![[Image: 13481303_KpOIcOG7drxHK9U.png?1556314753]](https://file.toyhou.se/images/13481303_KpOIcOG7drxHK9U.png?1556314753)
we'll fulfill our dreams
and we'll be free
