akeli

The longer she lays there, the colder her mother feels. She tries nestling closer, and runs her small tongue against her mother’s silver shoulder. It was as her mother had done for her when she had grown cold during the recent evenings. Still the woman didn’t stir, but the child did not want to accept what she could barely fathom.

In a world where life was easily consumed by the natural ebb and flow of time, it was a miracle that she was happened upon by a creature that didn’t want to eat her.

She barely turns her head towards the sound of hooves and the shifting of debris, instead simply glancing out of the corner of her eye to see that another form had entered the scene. Had she been braver or older, perhaps she would have stood and attempted to chase the full grown mare from this hallowed place, or at least stood in an attempt to protect herself or escape. But the filly could barely muster the heart to pull away from the husk that once held the most important thing to her.

Where many would be gentle, comforting, or reassuring, she instead receives the truth in a rough and jagged blow by some mean lady she had never met.

Your mother is dead. If you stay here you will die as well.

Tiny ears pull back, and she squeezes her eyes shut. She knows what death is. Her granddam had died mid-tallsun, and though she didn’t have the emotional range to be effected back then, her mother had explained that the matriarch was gone to the meadows of the afterlife, and wouldn’t be returning. Death means gone forever. The little sparrow needs her mother, and refuses to stand.

She does, however, turn her head. Her brows furrow, and her nostrils flare. It would almost be comical had the circumstances been more light-hearted. If she was standing, the defiant expression would have been paired with a dramatic stomp of a hoof. But this was the best resolve she could gather. “Then I’m going to stay here. If I die, I will see mama again.” It is a petulant and stubborn response, and despite mama’s words about being nice, albeit cautious, to strangers, none of that mattered now. Mama was gone. None of those lessons matter anymore, not in this moment.

Her golden gaze, molten and vivid upon her white and grey hued face, brushed over the mare. Blackened like the coals of a dead fire, with waves of white splashing over the arch of her neck like foam upon rapids. Eblazoned upon her were beautiful intricate markings, and in a moment where the things hadn’t spiraled so out of control, Akeli would certainly fill the room with numerous bubbling questions about what it meant, and how it looked like a beaver wolf (for the child had never seen a bear), and if she was born with it, and where beaver wolves live, and it would be nearly endless.

The girl refocuses, finding it mildly difficult to not be distracted by the questions that rushed forth within her head. Her nose scrunches as she tries to be strong, attempting to hold back the big fat tears that skewed her vision and made the woman look like a mirage. “Besides,” her voice shakes as she speaks again, “daddy is gone now too, and mama was the only one who knew the way.” She turns her head back again, burying her face within the blackened locks, breathing in the familiar scent that was slowly being ruined by the time that had finally gotten away.

I’d give anything to hear you say it one more time,
That the universe was made just to be seen by my eyes.