Chernobyl

The Steppe’s emptiness lets the sounds of winter crackle over its jagged snow-skin and mounds of cold stone climbing into the frozen fog. It’s a rather comfortable feeling for her – the sharp cold, the stillness – it always feels as though you’re suspended in time when you’re in the step (from her personal experience, anyhow). Starlight finds the glassy roundness of her black marble eyes as they flitter over his bone white body. He declares himself a monster. The corner of her mouth curls with mild amusement, chuckling beneath her hot breath as it rolls through wide, rounded nostrils. His next question (about sickness) draws only a smooth shake of her head, “no” is her silent answer before she moves her focus to the on the crystal makings that surround him. The icicle spears prove interesting enough to observe for a few minutes until the approach of a girl breaks the peaceful (or at least peaceful to her) bubble of quiet arctic that enwraps them.

“No.” She responds with a flat, least concerned tone while watching the girl with both her ears and eyes. The stallion addresses the girl, Chernobyl can hear his granite voice off to the side but she doesn’t bother to intentionally hear him, only peering down to the lost child. His voice, the one that belongs in this frigid mountain atmosphere, is for her again. Her ears bend to the sound and her head snakes back upward, tipping her thorned weapon to the side and letting her chunky black forelock fall over one eye, revealing the other to lay suspiciously onto him. “Yes.” Her voice is serrated like icy blades, forming around clear words with delicate precision; lacking the feminine notes of a typical mare. “I was once. Not anymore though.” And it seems easy enough to leave it at that, for now. The girl pulls the strings of their attentions once again and it seems that the focus magnetizes back to her.

She lets the ideas of his stone patience percolate through her thoughts, she likes that. It’s meaningless, it’s irrelevant, but she makes note of it anyways – is it that obvious this will not be the last time she infiltrates his mysterious meditations? To her it seems so, yes.

Their faces portray where this conversation might be going. It makes her skin start to crawl, her stomach feels itchy and her feet begin to tingle. She no longer wants to be a part of whatever this is; this reunion, this touching tale of lost relative love – mental gag. Her tail is the first thing to twitch, slashing wildly every few minutes. She waits it out for now, waiting for the speckled stallion to respond to Glacia’s declaration, or maybe a comet to rain fire upon everyone. Either way, she’s stuck for now.

I can't tell one from the other;
I find you, or you find me?