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Little defective colt follows his mother. Still covered in afterbirth, he has just learned to walk. Before the body of his father he stands shaking, his blue eyes only just opened as they gaze with pure innocence upon the dead. Trapped in the shadow of his shifting mother, he stands stolidly, knowing fear. He cannot know fear. He does not know of the concept. He cannot understand death, blood, or the heat of it as it splatters across his face. He does not know such concepts. He hears her voice but does not know what the commands mean. He does as she does, associating each word with each action. When she said come she moved her legs about as he has just learned to do, and, unsure of any other course of action, he chooses to resort to mimicry. And thus, moving his new legs about, he learned what "come" meant. He established that stay meant to wait and watch as she transforms, for he cannot do the same himself. He had felt a stirring- he had felt as if he should have been able to. He had felt as though somewhere in his blood was the capability to become another being entirely. But he could not. And so he waited, and thus he learned what "stay" meant. She says come once more, but she is not moving. He nervously moves his legs about- walks, as was the common term unestablished in consciousness- and moves himself behind her, as he had done earlier when following the order. He does not know what here meant, where here was- she has made no indication towards any particular place. And then beside the body of his father he falls, his mother's force behind him. He understands that here is where she wants him to be, where she directs him. Thus he learns what "here" means. He feels the heat of the red life that once fed the stallion alongside him. He hears her call him father, but he does not know what that means, simply that the quiet, still, open one must be that. She calls the substance blood- orders him to lay and bathe. She takes the paws that he unhesitatingly knows to belong to his mother and swipes them across him, forcing him further into the pool as she does so. She covers him in the blood and pushes him down. And thus he learns what blood is, and what bathe means. She says great and strong, but he doesn't know what the words mean. She tells him to drink and forces him down by the neck until each breath is filled with the sharp sting of his father's blood- until the breath changes from inhalation to an uneasy swallow that suppresses the natural inclination to reject the fluid. And thus he learns what drink means. But through it all, his eyes cannot meet his mother's gaze. He cannot find love, or learn what it means. He does not understand what it is about her voice that enraptures him so, or why he must obey her. He does not know what Knox is. What Knox means. He does not know why softly, lying beneath the piercing sound of his mother's voice, he hears the whisper of death. He does not know why the black bridle wrapped around the dead stallion, framing his face in an image of pure defeat, is seeming to lose its hue each moment. Why the night tones of its worn leather are dripping and mixing with the blood, burning as it slides down his throat. He does not know he is drinking the curse that plagued his father. He does not understand the faint green glow that seems to haunt the now white bridle. It will be quite some time before he understands the concept of a spirit left behind. [Should we open this up to his brothers or keep it just us?] |
