My thoughts are the cold kind,
I've got storm clouds brewing behind my eyes
She swore to herself each time that this would be the last visit she ever made. Yet, like birds returning to the same nests year after year, like turtles searching their way back to the shore of their birth, so Erthë found herself back upon the shimmering sunset sands again. Though distances and perspectives were treacherous in this illusory landscape, she never found it difficult to find that spot. Her legs brought her to it on their own accord, willing enough though her heart remained reluctant, tender and sore still despite the passage of time, and though her eyes searched for traces of the one she had lost, nothing remained.
No bone, no feather or drifting strand of hair. It was as though the body of a black mare had been absorbed into the water and the sand, dissolved and consumed, swept away by ocean tides or perhaps turned to dust and swept off on a south-bound breeze. All that could be seen was a shimmer in the air, rippling not unlike heat-waves over sun-baked rocks.
Thoughtfully the slender yearling gazed at it as night slowly settled in around her, dark and soothing and bright as starlight reflected in the shallow water. Her stomach churned, a sensation not unlike nausea, and she recalled, reluctantly, that other time her body had felt as heavy and uneasy...
It had been hot, that day. The sun had glared down upon her back from a sky where no cloud was left to cast a shadow, and the heat from burning fires made it difficult to breathe. Smoke, black and choking drifted across the battlefield and caused her eyes to water, tears and billowing fumes obscuring her vision as Erthë followed the path of the dark mare across the sky, growing steadily larger as she approached. Blinking furiously to clear her vision she remembered the taste of relief upon recognizing her mother's sturdy silhouette, the mingled pride and fright as Shadow joined the attack upon the monstrous Beast-God. Erthë had been swept aside by a flick of its giant tail, scaled and shimmering like the inside of an oyster, and from the place where she had fallen she could only watch as the warriors around her rained destruction down upon the deity from another world.
She had believed that everything would be alright, that time. Though the battle raged around her, through her skin felt as though it would melt from her bones and despite the pounding throb of pain in her injured leg she had been alive, and her mother was alive and fighting, and how could they lose when two times before the forces of Helovia had emerged victorious, against all odds?
Erthë snorted, a bitter expression twisting her lips into a semblance of a smile. Oh, they had won alright. But the cost, oh, the cost...
She had still believed when the mother came to stand before her, head raised high in defiance of a GOD, poised between her daughter and approaching death. Erthë had smiled, but her welcoming words had turned into a scream as a sudden blow from the Crocodile sent her mother flying through the air.
The rest was a blur of tears and terror, numbness and grief and blood that slowly leaked from the chest of a dying mare. Erthë could recall whispered words of farewell, the quiet gathering of strangers around the fallen soldier, but most vividly of all she remembered her own helplessness. Unable to do anything but cry, powerless to save the person who had been closest to her heart, it was a hard lesson for one so young; that nothing should be taken for granted in this world. There was a price to pay for everything gained, and getting ahead meant that something had to be left behind.
Erthë sighed and shook her head to clear it. Tears had come unbid to her eyes and she wiped them from her cheeks, a swift and impatient gesture. She could dwell over the past forever without being able to change what had happened. Nothing short of a miracle would have been able to save her mother then, and it would take more than miracles for her to get back home from here. Spring had arrived, and there was much to be done; this would be her last long trip for some time to come, of that she was certain.
Erthë
And my heart will be blacker than your eyes
when I'm through with you
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