chernobyl

i was not caught, i crossed the line
i live among you, well disguised

Before Murdock nothing really mattered to the dark, abysmal eyed mare. Sure, she cared for conversation from time to time and of course, herself. Things like love, kinship, rank or power never left a mark on her mind or tugged at her heartstrings. Knowledge mattered, but not enough to pursue her scholarly duties when she accepted the Basin's invitation all those years ago. Drop-out. So basically she gave no shits, but now, belly swollen and tortured love stirring in her creaky old bones, she gives at least some shits now (could be pregnancy hormones, really). Long story short, she is here now where she met her lover for the last time, where they conceived what germinates in her womb. Over her abdomen her shaggy fur warps and beneath it gurgles as the fetus pushes around, eager to leave his prison.

Frostfall trickles down in the form of floating star-flakes, mid-day light is so dim it seems much closer to sunset than it actually is. As she walks along the snowfall gathers down her back, building a pale blanket along the length of her plump body. She's very alert, moving through the sunless shadows cautiously, her hooves crunching the ice and snow beneath her. She stops to listen, to smell, her senses heightened and her self-preservation meter uncomfortably sensitive. Her nostrils quiver each time she pauses to look around, her ears following the sounds of moving water, the burbling sound of the split river running through the meadows of the East.

Tragically hopeful, she scans the grayness of the skyline, the pale canvas of the shallow hills and the slotted halls of the bamboo patches for the flicker of his colors. Her heart sinks and her gut twists; Murdock's child pops a hoof into her bladder. She kicks in response, her thick dreaded tail slashing aggressively. She moves on in body (but not in thought), dragging her feet across the white and plans ultimately to make her way toward the river mouth still – alone, and without Murdock.

He was gone again. And this time she would have to give birth to her first child – his child, without him.

Alone has never bothered her before, but this time it palpated her heart just a bit. In all her fluster, she disregards the Falls' as any sort of support at all. It made her nauseous to think about it. Regret is starting to make a little nest around her throat and loneliness is creeping up quickly behind her. These things swirl around her head, they loom, and they drag her down now as she plods depressingly along. Memories, love – sentimentality; fuck all of it. The child rolls and she's forced to stop in her tracks for a second, growling and tossing her head. Suddenly the falling snow suspends – it stops, nay, it pauses in mid air. Bull flutters her almond shaped eyes, her nostrils trembling as she reaches out to brush through the flakes in front of her. They bounce away, up, down, sideways, twirling and falling, floating and colliding with no gravity to them at all. Only the space around her is effected, the rest of the forest is caught among the regular snowfall. The child kicks within her and the snow resumes as natural.

Everything still sucks. Her tail  repeats its violent slashing and she picks up her feet into a sweeping jog of defiance. She refuses to let go of her own form of grieving her immediate future. Her lonely future. The hormones rage rather liberally through her veins and now she cannot escape the cage of self-pity. The incredible phenomenon performed by her unborn child is pushed away and moves along without emotion.

On one of her stops, the kind where you listen and smell and watch, she hears a faint feminine voice not too far away from where she stands, “Are you thinking of the past too? It seems that's all I can do lately. Thinking about what could have been.”

She can see the paleness of them both when she finally focuses her eyes toward the voices and nose picks out the smell of a familiar musk. She doesn't know his name, or if he gave it that one time in the snow years ago, she doesn't remember. She remembers his handsomeness, though it means little to her, and she remembers the pillars of twisted ice he managed to construct from just his own energy. His hipbones catch the light now, and the ripple of his ribs, the wide curve of his big cheeks sticks out a little more. She doesn't remember him failing to Frostfall when she saw him lurking in the Arch before, but perhaps it was just that moonless starry night that hid him well enough. Suddenly a strong, random gust slides down the side of her and she shivers at the ghoulish breath of the chilly wind. She can taste a familiar metallic taste, a taste that brought back brutal childhood memories – it is the taste of death, of separation, of sorrow.

Perhaps it was the sorrowful dip of the spotted stallion's eyes, or the hopeless hang of his head, or maybe it was her own memories, her mourning for her isolated future. It could even be hormones, but no matter what prompted it, she was instantly struck with something heavy.

“Sometimes the past is just better.” Her granite voice flows ahead of her as she steps carefully toward them, completing the triangle of bodies standing among the green stalks, minus the halved one next to the stallion. “And then again.. sometimes, no.” For whatever reason, something unknown to her, she is drawn toward them as if she will find something more comforting about the spaces near them instead of in the distance. She doesn't have much else to say, but her eyes move over the stallion and for a quick moment the winged girl before observing the frayed end of the bitten bamboo. She says nothing, but the tension still buzzes in the atmosphere.