K A H L U A

Anger. Hatred. It boiled over, pouring upon all of them, spewing from Torleik's mouth onto her and Lace, onto Evangeline and another unknown, onto Kaj who descended upon them from the heavens. The more he talked, the more the poor girl began to feel small and, to be honest, she pitied herself for the beating she was taking more than she pitied the stallion that was hissing at them so purposefully. But perhaps the biggest dagger to her heart was when he began to mention the wall. He wanted to praise her, to congratulate her on a feat that she had accomplished only with the help and favor of the gods and her herd, and she had come here to shoo him away without a second thought. It stabbed and ripped open her flesh, making her bleed sorrow. And the owl fledgling shook in her nest with a look of fear that the useless overo understood well. Was this partly her fault? What had she done?

And then to accentuate the point came Kaj, her friend. And the girl tried to find a smile for him, but before she could make one nestle upon her face he bellowed, the warrior side that she had yet to know exploding forth from him with a fury that made her shiver and drop her ears to her head. But even as he yelled and caused tears to well up in her eyes, she knew she could not argue with him. What have we become?! And it made it worse that he wouldn't even look at her. And now all she wanted to do was run away, and at the same time run to him. But how could she run away from something she had started? And how could she run to him, blocked as she was by the wall of roots that Lace had erected. And so she stood there, tears still threatening to (but not yet) falling down her cheeks, shaking from head to tail, like the child that she was.

Friend. It was the word she should have spoken. The word that she should have used. And yet, at the same time, Kaj and the others did not know the history between herself and Torleik. But did it really matter? Had he been so bad then? Was he really so bad now? Her brain hurt (it seemed to happen so often now) as she tried to sort out her feelings about the matter. But she could not, because she was still fighting to keep herself from crying. And for a moment, she began to press uselessly against the root wall that blocked the doorway, trying to push through it, trying to reach Kaj, trying to fall down at his hooves and beg his forgiveness for angering him so. Would she lose a friend this day because of her fears? Would she lose a friend because she acted before she thought?

And then her will broke, because Kaj finally caught her eye, you should be proud, and her tears fell. Because he was right. Because she was confused. Because she could not reach him. Your hatred. He was right. That was not her. She did not hate, she did not attack others unprovoked. So why had she now? Had patriotism really brought her this far down a path of destruction? She cried for herself, for what she had caused, for fear that she had lost Kaj forever, for fear that she had worsened the relations between the Basin and Edge when she sought only to better it. She cried because she was lost in her mind and she didn't know who she was in this moment. Somewhere in the mix her ears had moved from laying upon her head to falling out sideways. She was ashamed.

But even as she cried, Lace was speaking. There was still anger, still frustration, in his voice. She wondered how he had not been affected by the WingLeader's words, how he had not fallen to the ground in shame at his actions. But it was clear, even to the girl, that he felt none, and a whisper in her head, just the faintest of tiny inklings, asked her a question. Could she really follow this stallion, the one she had looked up to so long as her Glazier, if this was his heart and soul? And even as she thought such things, a new round of tears fell, in pity for herself that she should have to make such a choice. Did she not love the Edge? Then why was she questioning her leader? It was a question she could not answer.

And if the girl had not suffered enough, for surely she was thinking mostly of herself in this moment, another came- the one she had found being attacked in the Thershold. I know a tone of racism when I hear it. More attacks, more blame. Would they really call her racist? Was she? Sometime around now, her tears dried, her heart and chest hollowed and empty, her mind no longer thinking anything except that she wanted out, her hoof still pawing at the roots that blocked her way, her eyes searching for Lace's, begging him to let her out of what had suddenly become a glass prison. An eye for an eye. She hadn't heard it, but she didn't think upon it. She wanted to hide under the wings of Kaj, to snuggle close to him, to look into his eyes, to know that he was still hers to call friend. Her Kaj.

And the last one came, name and face unknown, but the overo did not pay much attention to her. Kahlua only stared, blue eyes searching for a new face now- Torleik. She shuddered to think what should come of her now. She was not brave, she was not defiant. But her mind begged for a chance to fix what she had done, begged her to speak up and say she was sorry. But she shivered when she thought of what Lace would think of her then. Instead she tried to find Torleik's eyes, to look deeply into them. She was an open book, if he found her gaze he would certainly now her feelings, cheeks still hot and wet with the shame of what she had done. “I'm Kahlua,” she offered, though Kaj had already said it. “I'm glad you like the wall.” Her voice was still choked up, thick from the mucus that clogged her throat, and she took a deep breath before she spoke again. “Your friend is rather cute.”

She could not bear to speak to Kaj, her heart still torn in two for what he had said and scared to death that he would not accept what she would say to him anyways. Instead, she made a silent vow to herself, despite the fact that she did not know his name, to find this Torleik later. To fix what she had broken.