Skywalker has always preferred the night and its ample secrets; in the gloom that clings so readily to his black skin, his ulterior motives are allowed to thrive and fester, shaping and reshaping in the most disturbing of ways. The thin, black stallion is fiercely ambitious and that ambition keeps him occupied – why else would he linger in that godforsaken marsh that reeks of rot and lunacy? Amongst his newfound peers he disregards that his own sanity could well be questioned and he does not think that his obsessive-compulsive tendencies are remotely unsound. He is terrible and proud: these traits of character making an honest appraisal of his faults impossible. So, he has moved out of the pestilent silence in the spectral marsh, and traversed all the way back to the threshold under the pretext that he cannot keep in the company of the insane. Why, he wonders, do they take such terrible pride in being dysfunctional?

The night also offers him the luxury of watching without being seen: a convenience made easier by his tar-black skin and the strange constancy of night that holds Helovia clenched in an iron fist. A gathering of shadows and trees on the westernmost border of the threshold harbors him and he is thankful for the vantage point as it gives him the opportunity of choosing his company. Something, he has learned, not too common in these overcrowded lands. From where he stands he watches her stumble across the treacherous lips of the borderlands, his face is clad in a blur of mild disinterest and ugly curiosity. If you know Skywalker, it is not hard to say from which part of him the two, conflicting attitudes sprout. Bolted hard against arrogance and indifference, disinterest is the most prominent and frequent expression to surface on his hard face, but his obsession on the other hand – that feverish ambition that goads him in his every endeavor – cultivates a morsel of interest in his chest. Keenly he watches her stumble towards the water, slightly amused by her stumbling weariness.

And then he detaches himself from the shadows, his blue eyes fixed on her as she lowers her head to the cool water, his movements are slow and easy but his stride is no less in the length of a wanderer. It does not take him long to stand at the other side of the stream, coming to a halt in such proximity that, if there had been any sun, his shadow would fall into the water by her muzzle, warped and distorted by it’s quick run.

“Are you lost,” he asks and steps into the water, the numbing sensation washing against his forelegs, “or just dying of thirst?”

S K Y W A L K E R.


Hemlock