How long had she been walking?

Najya had lost count after many cycles of both the sun and the moon. She knew it had been many months now, but it was hard to mark the passage of seasons in the desert. The desert only knew heat and cold; night and day; life and death. There was no variation in the desert. But eventually the desert gave way to unfamiliar lands. Shifting sands gave way to a new world.

Najya continued forward.

She had given her promise not to stop until she had found a place to make a new life – somewhere far away and unfamiliar. Najya did not know what had happened to Shahan when she had honored his promise and fled. But when she awoke the next morning the smell of blood and death was thick in the eastern wind. Her thoughts turned to her family – to all she left behind. But her future was her own now. She was Najya – “free.”

Her eyes hardly recognized what was around her any longer. She functioned more like a machine than a living being. When the sun rose in the sky, she continued her journey forward. When it sank below the horizon, oblivion took her away once again.

Until the day she stumbled across this land. The day when the scent of other equines burned in her nostrils and she breathed it in and allowed it to fill her with life once more. Gone was the mechanical woman hell bent on survival alone.

Najya was here.
And she was alive.

Green. Everything here was so green. It was so unfamiliar in comparison to the burnt oranges and dusty browns she was so accustomed to. But perhaps this was just what she needed. Perhaps this green could help purge her memories of golden sands soaked in crimson blood.

The redwoods were something of an enigma to the little mare. Najya, having spent her whole life in the desert, was familiar only with desert grasses and arid shrubs that required very little to survive. Najya never knew trees could grow so tall – tall enough to puncture the bellies of the heaviest clouds. Is that why everything was so green here? Did these trees rip open the bellies of the clouds and spill life-giving rain on this place?

She moved slowly, for she was equal parts overwhelmed and enthralled by this place, wondering what today would bring. Was this the end of her journey…or was this just the beginning of the next chapter?

Najya

oh the desert dreams of a river that will run down to the sea,
like my heart longs for an ocean to wash down over me