jane
Jane had been taught that beauty was the be all and all of her life. Her golden coat gleaming beneath the sun, she had been readied as a spouse. Then she would become a mother, and then, like the countless mothers before her, she would die beneath the weight of her wrecked and obliterated body. Ruined by the failure of her parenting, ruined by her uselessness. Once that spouse had selected her as His, she would be a beautiful newlywed before she finally faded away beneath knowledge and education she would never use again.
So there was a grudging respect whenever she found something that wasn’t beautiful. The dale where she’d spent every Spring, was beautiful in the way of mint grass and skies like the outside of a seashell. Winter had been biting, but yet beautiful in its own way.
The swamp, the Tinean swamp, was not beautiful. No matter how one tried to twist it, this place was not beautiful. There would be no wonders here, no grass glinting as an omen of survival. Only the dark mud, darker even than she was. But a lack of beauty did not mean the lack of beauty’s feeling. There was a type of awe that lingered in the pit of her stomach. She regretted the sensation of the swamp trying to pull her into it.
A form rested beneath the murk, one she did not dare interrogate. Join us, the swamp seemed to say; the trees appearing like skeletons, Join us and be ghastly. It was not a request. But Jane was blessed with the very equine invention of ‘luck’. By all accounts, she should have been dead long ago. But she had survived starvation and serpents in the desert. Her limbs were strong enough to avoid the suck of mud on her hocks.
A bird caught her attention. Standing in the ooze- yes, ooze, like a massive wound on the face of the earth-, she watched the bird. Its body was an attempt at light, but ultimately a failure. When it moved, she could see that its feet were large and splayed. They would have been yellow if not for the fact that they were completely obscured by the mud.
But the burst of a twig, and the bird took flight; mud dripping from his feet. Jane froze; gauging danger. She would run if she had to, but she did not know this place. She was also 19 hands, a considerable height that was possible to cause damage. The suck of the mud would pull her in, if she ran, and she would be slowed.
Something brushed her back legs and Jane’s soul nearly left her body. She jumped and spun, mud being forced to let her go. The gold of her coat that would usually have been marvellous was rendered drab and dark under the mixture of swamp and dusk. Before her stood a near cadaver of a horse. Bleached the colour of bone, before her stood a wraith. A spirit. An omen. Jane took a cautious step backward. Of course, Jane knew that a spirit would never be bested. Still, she’d try to run if she had to.
The Tinea swamp is not friendly at night, you know.
Jane sucked in her breath; her stomach sucking and gripping at life like the swamp also did. A spirit would not give warning, she told herself. “Very few places are,” she finally managed to say. “Sorry, you frightened me.”
@[Ophelia] / speaks / this took a decade omg im so sorry
