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Despite the fact that I initiated the interaction, I am still surprised by her touch. It is almost violently affectionate, in a way that stirs panic in my breast. I want to pull away from the unfamiliar feeling of her feathers running along my pained spine, and when they cast my forelock over my eyes I find myself stepping backwards and stumbling over my own sugar lump hoof. Stumbling, of course, almost straight into the czar. My nose wrinkles, my brow extends to the sky as if I had a horn to brandish. When the curls cleared from my vision and I saw Kaj above me my immediate response was to move forward again, but somehow not forwards towards the filly. I found myself instead moving closer to the red tipped roan boy from the meetings. Needless to say, too many things are happening at once. I feel the immediate need to withdraw but also nothing but the heat of the fire--a reminder of the heart of this land and my brush with death there, a reminder of the Crocodile God fighting against the sun, a reminder of the hurt--and the closeness of bodies and want to move. I listen only vaguely to the words spoken. Kaj insists we introduce ourselves, something that I certainly could not do in such an anxious state and likely wouldn't even before finding myself in it. The filly calls herself Akeli. The foal calls himself Murtagh. They speak of their mothers. They are happy. I call myself nothing. I know my name as a distant star, something once spoken by a mother I no longer have. Something perhaps forgotten by my father. I am not sure if I was happy or not--I am not quite sure of the emotion at all, yet. Standing nearest to Murtagh and farthest from the Czar, I sway in a silence that is soft like Akeli's down. |
Milo uses selective mutism. It has relatively no effect.
