I should have kept flying. I shouldn't have landed. I wasn't ready for this. I wasn't ready to be recognised, to face the truth about your death, to face the fact that I ran away when my herd, my family, needed me most, to face the horror that is my own selfish want to live on despite your departure.. I wasn't ready for this.

I was not ready for this.

My casual posture seems to tremble, twitches travel along my spine as I attempt to read the mare's silent body language. She spins away from the pool, facing me with her sightless orbs, drinking in what she could of my identity with her other senses. Somehow, I feel exposed before her, like her sightless eyes might see something more than the pelt of mine which reflects the sky's mood upon it, the dreadlocks that decorate the crest of my nape, that she might look straight through the tribal star upon my side and into my heart, my soul within.. Can she see the gaping wound, the hole, left behind by you? Does she recognise that I am but a shell, an empty vessel, an abandoned ship, guided by no more than the whim of the wind?

Can she see just how close I am to giving up?

The lyrical belle replies to me, her tones just the right level of volume. Somehow, I am reminded of my mother, who could soothe all my troubles with a single phrase. But then she confirms my fears, she listens to the tugging of her memories, she mentions that I am familiar to her, and I watch as her façade betrays the realisation. You travelled with another young creature… It is those words that seem to bring everything crashing down around me. The wind that was so recently supporting me stops altogether, and for a moment, we are graced with just the drought-like heat of TallSun, beating down upon us through the power of the Sun Lord.

Then the temperature starts dropping.

It was subtle, at first. Without the wind to speed it up, it was a dry, brittle cold that settled over us, like a cloud interrupting the line of the Sun's rays - which also happened. The cloud was heavy and dark, pregnant with chilled frost and snow. Its load wasn't yet delivered, but still, the temperature continued to drop. I shivered, for I was not ready for this. I was not containing nor controlling that which had taken control of me. My magic wove its own story, and right now, the fear, the depression, the anger and rage and sheer confusion amongst the jumble of emotions that poured through me all congregated and culminated in the approaching freeze.

"Yes." The word chokes itself out of my mouth, my tongue dry from the disappearance of humidity at this altitude. Shivers rattle my frame, from the cold, from my nerves, I cannot say. "I.. He.. Gone.." My tiara bows down and I stare at the dirt between my feet, watching as my forelegs tremble, struggling to hold up not only my physical weight, but also the much heavier metaphysical burden of guilt that has made the hole within my soul its habitat. I blink, and my vision goes blurry - saline drops escape over the rims of my eyelids, though they turn frosty upon my cheeks as the temperature plummets further.

And just like that, I stand, bowed and cowed before the blind mare who has unintentionally and yet unequivocally catalysed a storm within and around me, one that I cannot see an end to.


[[ @[Rasta] <3 Aaaand as usual, idek what Cirrus wants to do most of time. ]]