LET ME LIVE THAT FANTASY


♕

There was a torrent of activity, and she tried her best to absorb it all (but everything was so fascinating, so overwhelming, so awe-inspiring, that she took more than a few seconds to shift and stare, to not be incensed, rattled, contorted into a thousand different directions). Her eyes focused on one thing after another: her sister being the first (always the first), with her loud giggles, unleashed sneezes, and silliness. Melita’s laughter rang out too, echoing, reverberating, and chiseling its way through her little frame until they seemed a mixture of jubilant and hiccups, and she began to wobble again, barely upright throughout the entire affair. Her twin was amusing and the world was jovial and everything seemed absolutely fine, positively perfect. She bent her head, tried to stretch without falling down again (because it’d taken so long to figure out how to maintain her balance), to touch and to ensure and to be forthright and ridiculous with her kin, but she too came crashing down inevitably, landing directly next to her sister in a wave of flickering sand and spirit, a sweet scent entangling within her nares (distinctly Clementine). “You’re funny!” The little bay girl laughed again, intoxicated and beguiled by the ignorance of children, the residual effects of simply being new.

She might have spent another hour or so there with her sister, lost in the deluge of exhaustion, foolishness, and joy, but a distraction deterred her attention from Clem and onto another form glinting in the horizon. It moved, coming closer and closer, all blinding, scorching colors, like pieces of earth and the sky altogether (and she looked from the horizon and down to the colt again, sure he’d fallen from there, another piece of the clouds, taken from the heavens), and the filly shifted her head from side to side, absolutely puzzled, enraptured, delighted, and spellbound. Who was this creature? What did they want? What on earth was it talking about? The conversation spiraled and curled away from her quickly, clips of words and phrases that held little meaning to her newborn mind. Curiosity, that dangerous, intrepid thing, got the better of her however, because no sooner had the boy (Iskra, he’d said, in between all the other odd statements) spouted off about goop and things, did she stare and shout at him from her sandy dune. “What is egg?” The notion, the syllables, the way they’d blossomed off her tongue sounded funny again, so she began to giggle once more, flopping over and rolling against the warm ground, relishing the simplicity of life. Then she opted to practice his name, because it seemed poetic while she spun through the dirt. “Issskra,” she sang.

Her mother spoke too, tender and delightful, and she thought about going to her, sliding across the strands instead of trying that awful standing sentiment. She sighed, wrinkled her nose, glanced at Clementine, heaved an enormous amount of effort into extending her forelegs out, and continued the process until it seemed nearly normal. When she stood, chest puffed like a proud bird, she motioned to her twin, a flailing muzzle striving to reach over one of her ears, tug on it with her lips maybe, encouraging her to follow along.