Hours upon hours of walking, the aches that I thought were making me irritable earlier are now making me both miserable and angry. The sway of the dark tail with crimson streaks tucked and tied in so neatly had kept me in a sort of hypnosis along the way; no, I was not staring and lusting over the dappled rump of my friend, just looking for something to distract my scrambled, shared thoughts. Such things ran through my mind as: why such an off color on such a light body, what had her family looked like, what it a random characteristic, so on and so forth. They seemed to become distracted by the oddball coloring as well, but had to anger me by bringing up the fact that my acquaintance was de-limbed at one point of our stranger stage.

The forest air -though already dry from the constant pulse of the sun- lost its' vegetated scent and slowly became less bearable. Our path cut through the open flames and bitter smog of the Heart where Africa and I had first met. The heat belched from the core of our hideous land in waves, the flames dancing hungrily, lusting to reach higher and higher into the air. I can only imagine its' desire to leap out and eat away all of the surrounding dry vegetation, only to eagerly slip into the green forests and eat away our food sources, along with lives of the homeless.

Homeless: that is -currently- what I am. I have not been accepted into the homeland of Africa's, nor was I ever correctly "accepted" into my previous home in the Basin. I had the privilege of meeting the proud stallion Mauja while he lead, and I had made acquaintances with a few of the other lower-cast herd members.. but I had never made anything of myself there. How I miss the cold embrace of the northern winds and shallow snow drifts.

As if the inside of my skull were a steamy window, I could feel each of them pressing their curious eyes against my field of vision, wanting to see where we were going just as badly as I did. My limp was showing now and making me feel next to worthless.. what a first impression this will leave if we stumble upon one of Africa's herd members. "This heat is going to be the death of me. Are we close yet Africa?" If it were physically possibly, the words would have stuck to the roof of my mouth, if they had even been able to make it up and out of my throat. It felt as if I had chewed on a cotton plant the entire walk and it had dried up every drop of saliva in my mouth.

Thankfully the sun has been on it's way to set and disappear below the rolling edges of the distance for some time now.

Tagged: @[Africa], open otherwise
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Table by Frostie