Oxy

The light is back. It's the first thing you notice as you circle around the glass basket that has been left in the caves, as you circle around the herb box that you have been ordered not to touch. And as much as you love disobeying orders, you got a nasty case of colic last time you didn't listen. The work of the pink bitch, no doubt. You remind yourself to find her and thrash her sometime later. But for now you let the anger go, because there are no longer shadows flickering over the entrance to this god forsaken cavern. It is light- not just daytime, but healing time- and you exit the cavern in a thunderous clash of hooves.

It's never any question where you'll go. You don't look for the Lesbians, nor Snowflake, no the Phantom Seeker. You don't seek the Blue to harass or Lace Face for some other reason. You don't seek any of your crazies, any of your WAR companions, anyone who might have some knowledge of the circumstances that you do not. You run. Your hooves eat up ground with fervor, covering ground with a grace that you so rarely wear. But fret not, for you will lose all grace as soon as you make it to your destination.

Helovia is far and wide, the land stretches on for eternity just like your mind, and you often have to take breaks. Drafts are not meant to run, they are meant to amble, but your mind is begging for release and you can't resist the temptation any longer. So many days you thought of just leaving, of wandering into the shadows, of forgetting any oath you had taken, but something held you in place. Fear. Because when your mind is clear, it is afraid. But now that fear gives way. You are ready to be yourself again, to forget your history, your troubles, your nightmares. You will be free, just as soon as your mind is once again locked in a cage.

It seems like weeks, months, years, but eventually you make it. You smell the salt first, that unmistakeable stench of the ocean. And then you see the sands, those terrible grains that stick to everything and grind against your skin. You are exhausted, dehydrated, limbs growing weak beneath you, but you find another gear. You dig yours hooves into the ground, you throw your body forward, and you are galloping. Galloping to the end of the beach where you know your prize awaits you.

When finally you see them, you collapse into a heap on the ground, body tumbling into the weeds with all the care of an elephant in a china shop. You reach out, snatching them up, not one by one, but in huge mouthfuls. You hardly taste them as they pass over your lips and into your stomach, each one as precious to you as the air you breath, as the blood that pumps through your arteries and veins. They are yours and you are theirs. Locoweed. Your only queen.

And it doesn't take long, half an hour, perhaps, before you are really feeling their effects. But you don't even mind that you're headed on a runaway train to highville. You don't mind that you're about to be higher than you've ever been before in your life. Higher than when you were rolling around with Gaucho. Higher than when you were chasing after the alien woman with Man Spots on this very beach. You have no scale for how high you're going to be, what peak you're going to reach. But you don't give one care in the world. She's back in your life, and you're never letting her leave again.