Isra feels like a ghost as she wanders, a miasma made of storms and dusk and stardust. A season has flown by her in this solitude. Only the wild things keep her company now and know that she is even still a horse that lives. Even she isn't sure sometimes, if this body of hers is made of flesh and bone instead of sea-foam and mist.
What do the others see when they look upon her? Do they see only a strange mare, dreaded with thistles and leaves with fear aglow in those ocean eyes? Can they even see anything more than a shadow, fleeting and thin and waiting only for the salvation of death?
Long have her legs forgotten what direction she travels in, what demons she flees from still. All she remembers is the sting of her flesh where it was singed and the hiss of fire as it cooed an eulogy to her. Fear is all she remembers, enough of it to walk cautiously up the mountain side.
The last mountain burned around her, swallowing up not only her hope but all the wildlife that kept her company as she healed from her past. Isra remember that as well as she remembers the lash and the blood that flowed like wine, thick and deep enough to swallow up her screams.
On she goes, quiet and cautious as if all the shadows loom wide and gaping only existing to devour her whole. Only her soft nickers to the deer and mountain goats breaks up the monotony of her hoof-steps. Here and there bird-song breaks the melody of four-legged beasts. She tilts her head at the birds, smiling as she imagines what stories live in the freedom of their wings.
It's a flickering smile as the world starts to tremble and break. All the trees creak and groan a death knell and Isra freezes like a lamb before a pack of wolves.
She's quick to look upward to see if a dragon shadow looms over head. Her ears flicker, waiting for dragon song to devour bird-song, hate to devour hope and beauty.
It never comes and the mountain stills in no more than few breaths. It's enough to make her freeze, one leg lifted like a deer who has not yet decided to flee or stay and graze just a little longer. Only the chain on her raised leg makes any sound at all.
Her fear trills out in chain-song, as fine and delicate as the trembling of her bones. Beneath her ribs that fragile heart of her races like whitewater but the sound of that is muted by the thickness of all that dust and rot on her bay coat.
Isra closes her eyes and prays, even though she's not sure what gods might even be left to pity a broken girl who wanted once only to drown. Still she prays and prays and offers a million stories to any god left to listen to the delicate things that have yet to die in a world full of sinners and monsters.
Jericho knew what pulled him into the mountains. He’d been avoiding them, trying to outrun the feeling, the sharp pang in his chest every time he so much as glanced towards their dark silhouette against the horizon. It was homesickness. Eager as he was for this new adventure and as much time as he’s spent exploring these new lands, he could not help but think of the home he’d left behind. The crisp alpine air, the sweet valley grass, the rocky slopes he used to roam and spar and tumble upon with his young comrades…memories came rushing back at the mere sight of the peaks, and he found himself constantly sighing and turning away at their aching familiarity.
But today, the promise of familiarity won out over wistfulness, and he set out to survey this still-unknown corner of Novus. It was not an easy ascent, but the young stallion could not help feeling exhilarated as he climbed. Jericho had grown up scrambling amongst the rocks like this, and as a result, he was quite agile on this terrain. A loose rock here and there was nothing to worry about in his eyes; it didn’t unnerve him to walk along a narrow ledge or to watch a pebble bounce and echo down sudden steep drops. What did alarm him, however, was the rumble of the stone beneath his feet as the earth bucked unexpectedly. He’d never felt an earthquake, and he stood stock still, head thrown back and nostrils flared long after the shaking subsided. What had that been, the young warrior wondered, taken aback. Was that normal here?
He considered abandoning the climb, but when several minutes had passed and nothing happened, he shook his head softly and decided to go on. He proceeded with much more caution, creeping slowly towards the summit with careful steps. It was in this manner he came across the girl.
She’s still, so still that he guessed she must not have heard him approach. Her eyes were closed, and for a moment he hesitated, not sure if he should disturb her. In the end though, curiosity overwhelmed him, and Jericho cleared his throat softly. “Hello,” he called, voice echoing slightly off the mountain cliffs despite his attempt not to startle her, “Are you all right?”
"speech"
Image Credits || original coding by kaons; modified by shady
It's takes her longer than it should to hear the stallion move towards her. Her heartbeat swallows up all the sound of the mountains. The sound of it rattles off her rib-cage and echoes like a waterfall in her ears. It feels as if it is screaming, the way it pounds against her like a living thing. She clenches her teeth together against the violence of her fear, pinching the edge of her lips between her teeth just to feel something at all. Just to know that she's alive and not buried beneath rock and rubble.
Finally she can hear him between the hummingbird sounds of her panic. A rustle of leaves, the skitter of a rock down the mountainside, the easy way he breathes like a man unafraid of the summit above that might slide down to crush them down to dust.
Isra presses her eyes closed hard enough that pain sparks like stars in the blackness shrouding her gaze. In that darkness she hopes and prays again to any gods left that he might be nothing more than a stray elk that smells like somewhere so far away she has no name for it.
She prays that he is not a man, a monster, another creature to wield lash or word. Her hope falls only on gods that have long since lost any fondness for the feral, broken Isra.
When he clears his throat and speaks she cannot help the way her eyes flutter open like the softest of sighs. For a moment she relaxes a fraction, his voice is soft enough to be merely man instead of monster. That frozen, poised hoof lowers back to the rock. The motion could take minutes for the slowness that she moves, as if all her joints have rusted and corroded until only the shell of what was once a horse's leg is left behind.
She's slower still to put together the sound of his voice into words. Slower yet to understand the question in them. Isra has forgotten that horses speak to each other in a way so very different that the soft huffs of forest animals. She has forgotten that he speaks a language she should understand. It all seems so very strange to her.
She's been alone too long in the wilderness, interacting with others of her kinds only hours at a time. Weeks have gone since she last saw another, longer still that they spoke and stood so close to her.
“No.” The wilds have taken from her the ability to lie and smile, to send him on his way with a look that says, run along, I have no need of you. She can only whisper, soft enough that the syllable might be barely heard over the rushing of her blood and the unending rattle of her old slave chains.
But when the word is pulled back to him on the wind she too feels as if the wind urges her to turn. Look, look, look, it seems to say. Look and see what a living thing should be. It taunts her, that chill autumn breeze, and she's almost helpless as she lifts her sea-blue, golden eyes to meet his dark, steady gaze.
Isra trembles at the way the horns jut out from his flesh like spires of stone from between the waves. She wonders what things have been dashed to death upon all the sharp points and edges of him.
It feels as if all the gods in all the universes have forsaken her.
For a long moment, he thought that she hadn’t heard him. Despite the strange echo of his voice, despite their close range and the way her lashes had fluttered open to reveal a flicker of startling blue, he doubted himself, for she was slow to speak. Inch by inch, her body shifted, rearranging herself—though whether or not it was in reaction to him, Jericho had trouble determining. It was as if he’d just awakened her from a long and deep sleep, and her mind was still half there, lost in the shadows and mists of some dream world that he could not hope to know.
He considered repeating himself, wondering if it would make a difference to this strange creature so caught in her reverie. But then something stirred in the air around them, and the breeze carried back a single word to his ears:
“No.”
The response was so gradual that it felt sudden, and Jericho was caught off guard, briefly forgetting what he’d asked her. And then her eyes met his, and he remembered—he had to, because the look alone implied the full answer to his question, one that had seemed friendly enough, but he now realized had been unintentionally loaded. No. No, she wasn’t all right.
It was etched in every line of her face and her body. She reminded him of a deer he’d startled a few days ago in the wood, one he’d come upon suddenly and startled into sheer terror. He’d been close enough to reach out and touch it, and still the creature hadn’t moved, only panted in rapid, shallow breaths as it stared back at him with wide, dark eyes that mirrored the exact expression that the stranger was giving him now.
It was fear.
Jericho felt as if he had intruded upon something that he should not have, and out of his depth, his skin crawled with discomfort. Was she afraid…of him? As soon as the thought occurred to him, he was caught between two impulses: one, to flee the scene and let the damage be done, or two, convince her that he meant no harm? Truly, a part of him wanted to wash his hands of this, to descend from the mountain and to head back into the woods and across the river, pretending it had never happened. Somehow, it seemed cowardly. But mostly, he could not abide the uncomfortable feeling of having brought pain to one undeserving of it. His conscience must be appeased.
“I’m sorry,” Jericho murmured, taking a slight step back so as not to intimidate her. “I didn’t mean to startle you. Are you…hurt? Let me help you—please,” he added at the last minute to soften his words.
"speech"
Image Credits || original coding by kaons; modified by shady
The sound of please on his lips softens her and fades out the sharpness of her fear to something gentler. No monsters asked burn her, no lash asked to dig deep into her flesh. All her panic turns to nothing more than caution and she's able to lean into the gaping space between them. He widened the space by a step and she only closes it by an inch of her nose as she scents the air around him like some wild, untouched animal.
She has forgotten society and never has she known a man to not be a sinner and hide his stain beneath smiles and gentle touches. Perhaps it's only the safety of the mountain ledge at her back that lets her close the distance. Isra would be happy to toss herself into that cloud-filled abyss just to make sure she never feels the touch of a monster or fire upon this borrowed skin again.
Her skin feels empty where the scars of her past have be wiped away, she misses her sun-shine skin. She slips away in thoughts of the past and doesn't surface until the sound his voice echoes again on the trees and rocks around them.
There is almost an apology in her eyes, a remnant of some social grace she has only now remembered she posses. So much of her was lost to the sea and to the violence of men. Again she closes that distance between them with no more than a single, butterfly sort of step. Isra moves like horses that live behind walls have forgotten how to move. Everything about her is more reminiscent of a deer, a prey animal, a thing that knows only how to live. She does not move as a horse should.
Even her voice when she talks is strange, whispering like a willow that has learned to talk on a fall breeze just before the rains descend. “I forget sometimes there are others.” There's a story in her voice as there always is. Always does she talk as if the next movement of her lips might be magical, as if worlds and legends could live on a curl of her lips.
If only Isra remembered how to smile. She cannot remember the last joy she felt, perhaps back when the world started to burn. Perhaps she hasn't smiled she she tried to down herself in the sea just to feel free.
She doesn't mention that she forgets only that there might be others who are not monsters.
Still when she lift her eyes to meet his there is a touch of a sea-shine in the blue. “Are you not afraid?” Her wondering sounds like a warning chime and she lifts a hoof to just graze the peak of a small rock. Just enough of a touch to feel that the mountain still trembles, if only slightly, beneath them.
“It feels as if the mountain might collapse around us and take us with down with all the rocks and trees.” There's that fear again as she talks, a flash-back to another mad dash down a mountain side. Isra knows what it feels like run, run, run to flee the rage of others (gods and men).
She wonders if he does, if he might keep up with the wild things like her. She also wonders that it says about the stains on her soul that when she looks at his face, those wicked horns and red, red, red, all she can think is that all his markings look like blood.
Slowly, she took a step towards him, and Jericho found himself holding his breath, subconsciously aware that this strange and timid creature might startle at any second. There was something transfixing, however, about watching her slip closer. It reminded him of a game that he used to play when he was very young: he remembered lying very still in the valley grasses, scarcely even blinking as he watched the mountain hares emerge from their burrows. Sometimes, if he was quiet enough, curiosity would lure them towards him. Once, one had come so close that he could have reached out and touched it with the tip of his muzzle. Then, a shadow had flickered over them, and the hare had dashed away, diving into the ground to escape the hawk that hunted from above.
She reminded him of the hare, and of the deer, with those large eyes, somehow both guileless and suspicious at the same time. When she spoke again, it was the same—as if every word were a test. His ears flickered forwards to hear the soft, whispery voice, but other than that he remained motionless, the only acknowledgement of her words in the gentle swivel atop his head. He was rewarded with the flash of her blue gaze, and though he has never seen the ocean, the look crashes over him as a wave might. He considered even such a small gesture a victory, a brief and unspoken act of trust, and were he not focused on keeping so still, he would surely smile.
When she asked him if he was afraid, he could not help but wonder at the question. Afraid? It had not crossed his mind, to fear the earthquake. Of course, he had a healthy sense of self-preservation, but the trembling of the earth had not resulted in any trembling of his heart. The young stallion considered himself brave, but perhaps that was only because his sense of courage was limited to the physical. Jericho did not worry over natural disasters or personal injury: he was young, still young enough to retain the naiveite surrounding his own sense of mortality. His concerns were relegated to the more abstract, to things that he still could not fully articulate. Failing the bridequest, that was fear. Never returning to his family, letting them down, that was fear. But because he could not name them, they remained ghosts, vague dread that only tugged at his heart in the darkest of moments and easily brushed aside in the light of day.
“No,” he responded simply, daring to break the silence that had stretched between them and praying that she would stay. “It’s too big to fall. I’d guess this mountain has been around for years and years—it’s not going anywhere. At least not that fast. I grew up on slopes like these,” he told her, breaking the blue gaze to look around at the surrounding peaks. “They used to say that nothing was older than the hills. We were born there and buried there. Generations and generations,” he murmured, trying to suppress the sigh that blossomed in his chest.
"speech"
Image Credits || original coding by kaons; modified by shady
He is young, she thinks. Young enough to believe in the power of his spirit and in the magic of the earth. There is something heartbreaking to watch such a horse believe the world is not such a terrible place. It tears at her soul, shatters it and taunts her that this is what she might have been in another life, another world.
Looking at him and the lack of scars and sorrow staining his skin she thinks perhaps there are boys that are not yet monsters, not yet full of a lust and sin and stain. Isra feels ancient watching him, too old for the mere four years she has known.
It is the part of her that has survived demons and devils and dragon-fire that finally closes the distance between them. She reaches out with her nose, offering the gentlest of touches. Her knees sway like a willow branch for her body remembers how to survive, how to run, but that soul of hers remembers only how to bend and bow. Her heart wants to believe enough for the smallest of smiles, bitter yet gentle, to brighten the dark skin of her face.
“The biggest things are those that fall the hardest and the fastest when the world starts to turn.” Isra whispers, turning away from him after just that single offering of her nose to his skin. Upon her head that horn flashes in the light that beats hot and sure between the thick branches. She doesn't move far away from him, only a step, before she turns back with a sad sort of look.
“Will you walk further up the path with me?” Ahead the statues that wait to be discovered broken and dusted call to her with promise. The air feels heavy enough to become a dark hero and the ground wild enough with those trembles to become a villain. Isra feels as if they are living in a tale that once she might have only dared to dream.
It feels as if Novus has become a thing of dreaming and nightmares (full of devils and gods, seas and sands) that promise an end and mortals that hide tooth and claw behind palace walls. She wonders what the stallion at her back might be, what part he might play in such a place.
For a moment, no more than the blink of an eye, her smile is a light, tender thing. For a moment she's lost in the story and she changes quicker than the tides from sorrow to cautious wonder. He could get whiplash from her and the way she's never sure what this skin of hers might say and do, what thing her soul and heart might demand of her. “I will trade you courage for a story if you join me. I could tell you about things that are older than the hills.”
She turns away then and her chain rattles with rust and brine like a melody of magic. Her tail drags across the dust and leaves a trail. It dances in the light with an almost sort of magic, as if to say come, come this way.
And if he follows, if he stands close enough to her shoulder her might her hear her whisper. “I am Isra.” He might hear the way she says her name, soft and slow as if she needs to remind herself who she is.
She whispers as if she needs to remember like the stars whisper glitz through the night to remember that they are not yet fallen and forgotten. Luckily in the end he doesn't follow and she's left whispering her name without a story to herself.
