Stars were scattered the world over. They were sewn into his flesh, laced amid the nighttime sky, and shining up at them from the gentle swell of the shallow tide. It felt as though the two had stumbled across a world all their own. Atlas had never seen something more beautiful or divine- he wished to linger there for as long as the fates allowed and with prime company of course. For a moment the stallion felt betwixt by the sheer elegance of his surroundings and he attempted on more than one occasion to pretend that it would never come to an end. But all things grand and lovely were never meant to last…

He watched as the soft glimmer of starlight reflected across the water and he delighted in the translucent glow it shed along the gentle curves of Lena’s face. For the first time in his life, Atlas saw what numerous others had seen in him and enjoyed the sweet touch of the Gods as they shone up from the ocean’s reflection.  Where the stallion wore his beauty outwardly, Lena expressed it from within. Never before had he met another like her and knew that, somehow, he would never encounter the likes of her again. Atlas was an indulgent man who took and spent what he liked, but those that were willing to afford him such gluttonous behaviors were nothing like the heavenly creature before him. Her innocence and purity lanced through him like a brittle blade, taking with it the stitches and bandaged security he’d manage to patch together as his own. To Atlas, Lena was beautiful not for her plainness or her soft manner, but for her involuntary kindness and fragile strength.  She was like the wind that howled through the vacant valleys of the very mountains her songs mimicked, so free.

Again, he longed to rob her of that utter freedom she embodied, but instead directed his bi-colored gaze toward the moon above. His breath caught shallowly in his throat as she regarded him, the weight of her stare opening wounds across his skin, unseen. Somehow he felt bear and vulnerable beneath her careful observation, though he could not pretend that her fascination was so compelled, but more imagined. Yet, somewhere in the pit of his longing there remained a selfish want for her curiosity and her attention. Atlas desired nothing more than to be desired or to be an object of interest to those he too admired.  It was greed and arrogance that drove him to such lengths, but that very sensitivity was rarely discussed or truly noticed.

When at last Lena spoke, her voice projecting across the star-riddled surf, Atlas did not falter. Instead, he bent toward her, his eyes turning loosely across the plains of her face, her neck. He imagined the darkness of the mountains and the silent chorus they sang in tune with the winds that often surged between their pregnant berths. The tune was rich and low in his mind, but it quickly changed to follow the subtle notes that Lena pressed between his own waiting lips. For a mere second they parted, silently shaping around the scales that he couldn’t, himself, sing.

Atlas thought of the rain too and the way it smelled when the forest was ripe in spring. Again he attempted to utter the sounds that came to him, but only silence bowed from the hard curvature of his mouth. He felt at a loss. It was as if Atlas had spent his whole life focusing only on the sound of his own beating heart while the world sang sweet melodies all around him. The stallion would never admit to his own preference for solidarity, but that had been the first time Atlas had ever considered the sounds of the world at large. Lena had shown that to him and suddenly a feeling of unobstructed freedom swelled from deep within… and he desired more.

There was a great pause that surfaced thereafter, though it was not due from tension or misunderstanding, just quiet, unequivocal thought. Atlas had never been struck by another’s wisdom so thoroughly, so passionately, because that was how Lena spoke of her songs and her laurels. Even as the stallion’s name rolled effortlessly from her tongue, he noticed the certainty in the syllables. What was it that gave her breath, gave her the right to live so comfortably within her own skin? Hadn’t Atlas ever been that way?

He thought back to when he’d first arrived in Helovia and the horses he’d met since then… They’d all been too distracted by him to truly understand the farce that he was. Atlas was loud and opinionated, bold and yet not courageous. Those were all things he could only hope to be and all things that his well-crafted façade could momently afford. He hated his own indecency, but could not seem to find a way around it… it had become too ingrained, too fixed into the fibers of his being. As he deliberated such truths, he studied the stars above as they stared back at him. They were beautiful, mysterious, and utterly silent… why couldn’t Atlas be the same?

“I hear sadness… Does that make a sound?”