I wasn’t ready.

*"You are not awful,"*

I wasn’t ready.

*"Elding, I..."*

I wasn’t ready.

I was watching the way he seemed so broken, always melancholy. Like there was always something painful gnawing on him; like there was always something with claws spurring him in his back, a creature of ice that pierced him every day, every hour, every second--and oh god I had been ready to comfort him, to soothe the aches in his psyche cuz I knew that losing that fight would fuck him up—

--and he looked into my eyes and it was like shattered glass there, aimed to stab, ready to plunge (that should’ve been my first clue); but I was going towards him to embrace him again, to touch him, maybe, because that was a thing that I could do whenever he was broken and needed to be put together again—

--but I wasn’t ready—

*"I wasn't there to defend them.”*

--I wasn’t ready—

*"I was there to make sure the Falls were lost."*

--I wasn’t ready--

--for everything to b r e a k.

“NO YOU WEREN’T!!" my voice ravaged out of my throat, savaged and ruined and a mess of shattered things, shrill as it emerged from a throat it had destroyed on the way up—because maybe it was my soul I was hurling at him, as I backed away from him, quick, desperate steps that stumbled as I drew away from him—

“No you weren’t, no you weren’t, you’re lying--” and my voice was crumbling as it chanted these stupid, childish things and my eyes were darting at him and around him and over there and here and beneath our feet and in the sky, looking, searching, pleading for a reason, a sign that—

--that this was right--

--or it was wrong and he was telling me a lie, a lie with lips that never lied to me before—

--but the image of those little girls crying in the meadow slid across my vision—

( I can't promise to always be here--)

--that deranged woman cantered across my mind, wondering if I was gonna kill her—

( --but I will never leave you until death takes me--)

--and my own words rang back at me, mocking mocking mocking my sorrow—

(Who’s that evil?)

(They’re made to be broken--)

--and everything in me was breaking, crumbling, crashing and you were falling from the sky from the force of it; my shattering hit you like the force of a cannonball and you lost yourself for a second and you fell for some feet, disoriented and confused, your wings useless against the surge of my—

--my—

--oh god Lee—

--why the fuck—

--why--

“Why?” I asked, my eyes snapping back to him; wide and desperate, my breath wild and broken as my gaze pierced into him, my words echoing in my pupils (why why why why), “Why were you there?” It was damn-near a moan, a dirge of some kind—because this was a day I had long expected to happen.

Lee was always a good thing that couldn’t last. I knew it from the very beginning, when things had started falling inside me at his touch; I knew, I fucking knew that he was something too good to be true, a dream that I had to be woken up from one of these days by the cold slap of reality (I mean, fuck--I didn’t even know his real name and he didn’t know mine either. How could something like that last--?)

The tears I had been perilously close to crying had dried up—or frozen over, I’m not sure which. I stood a ways away from him—like the shatter in my breast had been from that bond I had felt whenever I came near his weight and scent, his presence. Like that bond had snapped and the wires were flailing too wildly to come near again, their points hot and electric and dangerous—ready to lash if you came to close.

It felt like the bond had broken--because Lee had disappeared.

For the first time--I realized I didn't know who this stallion was.

“….Lee,” I said again, so soft, so soft, because my voice was dying and it was nothing but a croak that still wanted to believe he was just a liar, just a liar-- “….Leos. Why were you there?” Give a reason, give a reason that was good, give a reason for those weeping children, that crazy, skeletal mare—

“…what made you fight?”



"talk"