Essetia & Romul

And although I wasn't losing my mind, It was a chorus so sublime

Was it strange that she’d taken to wandering again, this time with Romul shortly behind and her children waiting for her back in the Throat? Did it make Essetia, the spy, less human that she did not desire to spend every waking moment tending her offspring? The need and sullen desire to stray came intermittently at first and then all at once, all the time. Duty had been excuse enough to allow her a short visit to the Threshold, but now it was the sole idea of rediscovering her identity that forced her from the sand and the heat of the South. Indeed, the mare was becoming troubled and lost without Ulrik’s guidance, where before she’d been less than supportive of his commitment to her, always fearing the worst where he was concerned. Now she prayed to the Gods for another chance to make things right… at least before she became just another version of the Father who’d abandoned her own family.

With a heavy mind and even heavier heart, Essetia lead Romul toward the Thistle Meadow and toward the place where it had all began. At times, the spy remembered how strong and foolish she’d once been— so clueless and unassuming. Though the daylight burned bright above and the dried grasses were becoming brittle to prepare for the coming winter, Essetia imagined the cloak of darkness on the night she’d been taken from the Falls. She’d been so concerned with her pride and her duty and her— her damned fortitude back then... She hadn’t even noticed how perilous her situation truly was when Ulrik had quite literally stolen her from her own youth and honest inexperience. Now, she seemed to wear those mistakes upon her sleeve— a troubled stitching made up of trial and error. Yet, she missed that blindness and that ignorance, before death and doubt and fear forced her to see and feel through the numbing influence of fabricated happiness.

Happiness was a funny thing. Perhaps it was an emotion that could be handed over in bits and pieces, or even huge waves, but it had taken from Essetia, leaving behind only small reminders of something she wasn’t even sure existed in the first place. She had been the one who gave and spared little parts of herself until all the endured was a barren shell. It smiled like Essetia and it talked like Essetia, but if she’d ever been a true and honest creature to anyone at all, they would have known that it wasn’t, in fact, Essetia. And now she blamed it on that singular experience with Ulrik in the Thistle Meadow, whereupon the girl became a woman and forgot all of her innocence instead.

As the spy skirted tall tussock grasses, instead favoring a trimmed and trodden walk, she searched for signs of memories among the lavender blooms. The chirr of summertime insects hummed like white noise in the background of a troubled, yet catching, melodrama that played on loop in the young mother’s mind. She watched as a soft breeze cavorted through lanky flower stalks, bending and pressing them toward the sunbaked earth below. This wasn’t how she’d remembered it, but this was an inkling that Essetia could cling to when she wanted to recall his face and the fire he’d inhabited when first they met. As she tried to reminisce, lost in vague flashbacks from more than a year ago, she was stunted by the fluorescent image of a flawless winter glow.

It belonged to a lovely female no older than Essetia and one more obviously at peace in the meadow than her carmine onlooker. She was much smaller than the warmblood mix, what with Essetia’s Clydesdale heritage, but no less charming with her marlin blue points and indigo eyes. It took the spy a moment to decide if approaching the angelic figure was wise or merely a fool’s errand, but she quickly pressed onward, intent on drumming up conversation. She needed to forget why she'd come in the first place.

“I believe it’s more beautiful in the spring,” Essetia offered when she was close enough to call to the unicorn from a distance. “There’s something about budding flowers that brings to mind a fresh start…” she added a little more absently. She couldn’t recall what the flowers had looked like in the cover of darkness way back when, but she imagined they were in full bloom, ready to wither in time for the snow.