His pain is my pain. His words are my words. Does he really think I don't know what he's saying about me?

I listen in silence as he speaks in a whisper not as quiet as he thinks, in a whisper not quiet enough to avoid the survey of my keen ears. They are soft, they are thin velvet that folds and turns at my command, but even they can take this hurt. Even they are trained, like the rest of my body, to suffer this constant abuse.

So mother has left. That's what father tells me, that's what I'm inclined to believe. Dog is dead and mother has left; father, in his grief, is leaving me too. But he can't bear to do it as himself, can't let himself take form or responsibility. No, let the babysitter Zsoka do that work. Let the emptiness of an already dead mind bear the pain of abandoning a child.

And the child? He can stand there, alone and cold, shivering unconsciously as he is splattered with water from the falls where he was raised to grow up. His father does not recognize these lands, so he has been told. These are not the hills they used to be, so he had been reminded. But the child? He doesn't know of this.

All he knows, all I know, is that my father is leaving me being. Perhaps I have lost my mind, perhaps I have no love for creatures like them. Perhaps my silence cannot simply be the silence of the broken and grieving, the silence of those left alone by the few things they had learned to love. So be it.

If this is my silence, I will embrace it. My mother has left. My father has left. My one friend has died; I am left with my uncle and his dog. I do not turn to watch the buckskin colt mask that my father wears fade into the shadow of his own magic and the woods, I merely exhale, expanding my nostrils and turning to look up at the remainder of my "family."

He is tall. He is a giant, really. Even if I were not a mere foal I would think this. As he stands above me, he becomes a monolith that casts a massive shadow over my mind. I wonder if there is anything more to him than this great size, this magnificent strength. And what will he do with a small child like me, too broken to train and too "dumb" to make a diplomat?

I stare up at him, my golden eyes curious as to just what he can do. What will he do with a grieving, mad child like me?

""