Desreal: say goodbye to the water; Kivioq

"Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god."
- Sir Francis Bacon
“Naturally,” she says amiably, acutely observant of the harshening and softening of his voice throughout that sentence, as though he warred with himself over his reaction to her laughter. Part of her then, is apologetic for laughing at his assumption - never at him, as he soon came to realize - but she makes no apology or explanation for it, such things simply are. She follows his gaze and listens to him speak of the lake tides that drift in and out before their feet, and her head starts to list to one side as she considers what he says. “I am glad to have its friendship, though I can see no reason why the lake itself could like me.” Michabou smiles, feels the Earth build in her blood and beat itself steadily like a drum, ancient but strong, as it beat steadily inside her.

In the time that they stare quietly at the water that rolls in and rolls out, she moves only so much as to wet her fetlocks or to brush her shoulder against his as she shifts her weight from one foot to another. In that same time, she had begun to concentrate and communicate with the things on the shore - the withered blueberry bushes that struggled against the cold and the snow, the reeds that snapped angrily to attention before the wind before swaying drunkenly about, the loam frozen in thin layers of ice with beautiful lacing at the edges, and to the loon that suddenly glided out of the reeds at the lake’s farthest edge and rode the lake-waves in to where she stood. She almost didn’t hear his voice break on the frigid air, staring too eagerly and too intently at the loon that stood and shook the water from his feathers. He moved in his waddling-walk to her side and rubbed his head against her knee, and she rubbed her velvety nose against his feathers, deeply breathing in his bird-scent and sighing afterwards.

Then, as if the loon had heard it, she said his name out loud. “Kivioq,” and it left a strange taste in her mouth, of wolves and winter, and she smiled. “I am Michabou, and this is my friend.” she gestured to the loon at her feet, but offered up no name for she did not know it - only that their spirits had come together in the peace of the lakeshore and the loon’s song, and behind it all, her Earth pulsed gently and newborn though it had always been with her, from the womb to now.

But the lakeshore darkened, and she felt the stallion’s loss keenly as he was swept from the lake’s small shore to the sea’s greater one. She was no fool and knew that he had been thieved from them, and knew too that her mother would do all in her power to bring him home because that was her duty, though secretly Michabou wished Raven (never mother, never Yehl - always Raven to her, as if they were not mother and daughter and no relationship existed between them that came through the blood) would simply do it for her, for her child’s happiness but she knew that wouldn’t be. And then, terror of all terrors, they were struck by plague but she knew him to be safe as long as he stayed in the shore. Wracked by coughing, by a sore throat and a tongue grossly swollen that talking or chewing had become painful; she decided to find him that in that green land of neutrality that she knew to be snow-touched by now, and she knew him to still be free of the plague as long as he stayed a prisoner there, by the sea.

“Kivioq,” she croaked, showing no fear to be underneath those trees and their dark twilight that reached around her. Her blackberry eyes had grown darker from the pain of coughing, and she felt another bout of it coming on that choked the breath from her throat and made her lungs protest painfully for the air they needed. She wheezed and wheeled about momentarily, then grew still and seemed not to breathe at all until she took small gasps of air, like a fish out of water. “Kivioq,” she croaked again, feebly so. “Don’t come home - not yet, not until it’s safe.” Surely, he had to know of what had transpired since he went to the sea. “But don’t stay there either, promise me you’ll come back…” she felt a shortness of breath, “back to the mountains.”