Twilight

By Scylla

Rating: PG-13 for character death and some descriptions of gore.
Summary: When a sudden tragedy tears open the web of dependence Twilight has fostered on her former mate Highflight, she is forced to come to grips with what has befallen her. Change may be a rapid thing sometimes, but realization is rarely so.

Twilight lay still upon the edge of the crevasse, as close to the curling lip as she could creep, and rested her chin there, looking down upon the body of Highflight. Each exhale stirred the thin threads of grass clinging to the earth there, her sides rose and fell, but she might have been a mare-shaped stone washed bare by summer flood.

Evening fell around her, hiding Highflight's still form in deep shadow. The kites missed him today, but Twilight knew they would find him soon. She thought of what it would take to move away from this spot when they did, and did not yet have the strength. Perhaps in the morning.

Though the world was hardly quiet, filled with the hum of night insects and the rustle and cheep of bedding birds, to Twilight it was unnerving silence. Accustomed to Highflight's acetic commentary, she felt the lack of it with a sense of bewildered loss that was not quite grief. ...He was her mate. Wasn't he? Wasn't she supposed to grieve? Her mother would have grieved, did grieve the loss of Twilight's sire. Twilight only felt small, frightened by the suddenness of the change, and dazed with the burden of responsibility that she was not yet prepared to take up.

The morning before began like many: with a comforting routine and the reassurance that Highflight was in a very good mood. His moods affected Twilight like the flux: misery while it lasted, but when it was over she felt somehow cleansed. Neither of them understood why Highflight took those fits of sadness and self-pity, but it mattered little now. In the afternoon, loping lazily in no particular direction, Twilight heard a scrabble and muffled thud behind her, and looked back. Her chestnut companion was nowhere to be seen. when her tremulous calls went unanswered, Twilight cautiously retraced her steps. Only then did she find the crevasse she had narrowly escaped... and the body crammed into the tiny space. Hidden in the grass, harrowed up by spring torrents, the opening passed easily under her hooves but had been wide enough to capture Highflight where he crossed. He never moved, never twitched, but she tried to get to him anyhow and called to him brokenly when she failed. But hours had passed since she could even see him. The tragedy slid into numbness as the night - surprisingly - got on with things while she waited.

The summer evening was breathless with humidity; her tender points felt slick and sweaty. That and the pricks of discomfort in her limbs got her to her feet, but still she did not leave the crevasse. Somehow, she was still waiting for him. This change was too sudden. Things that changed too quickly never stayed that way... of course he would come back. what if he hadn't died? What if she'd only dreamed it? Imagined it? The Mother knew she dreamed horrible things. He was not far away. If she moved and he did return... "'Flight?" Twilight called out, hesitant, and then again: "...Highflight? Love?"

Of course there was no answer. She rolled a pace towards the edge once again, watching the dark warily, and called once more. The smell of death rose to meet her this time, blood and decay and the stench of an unhealing, irrevocable end. It was the stench of truth, and it unlocked Highflight's hold upon Twilight at last. Already unstable from her trampling all afternoon, the chunk of earth on which she stood began to give way. Screaming, Twilight pivoted and flung herself hard to the side, eyes wide and white-rimmed; veins standing out on her neck and shoulders. Her heels sank and for a moment she feared her own death would follow her mate's, but at last she scrambled to safer ground and staggered, ears pitched back to catch the sound of pebbles and earth crumpling in on the stallion beneath.

She did not look. She did not need to. Instead her legs churned furiously in the direction she faced, pale hooves throwing clods of turf, lungs choked with humidity. The breath of lunacy washed over her mind and receded in seconds, but her panic was longer-lived and carried her through the remainder of the night.

Miles away on the brink of morning, Twilight at last looked behind her. She could no longer recognize the territory around her. The trees and soft folds of land that had been so familiar in the hours before daylight were gone. A needle of guilt pricked her conscience through her breathless daze like a bluefly sting: none would mark Highflights passing. He died without honor, and the chance that one of their people would find him before the kites and foxes dispatched him was slim. Twilight's horrified, adrenaline-soaked mind supplied the image of bloody ribs and circling carrion birds, and the world tipped up beneath her hooves. She slid to her knees and lay still, struggling to gain a foothold on reality. She could not go back. She could not!

The eastern sky brightened slowly while Twilight regained her breath. In her later years she would thank Alma for sending the grasscats elsewhere for prey, else she would have made a ready meal. Displaced sense trickled back into the places fear once filled, and at last, Twilight found her feet once more. Though it would be days before she steadied, the silver mare would never be thrown from them again. And little by little, with the passage of years and travel, Twilight trod a path about Highflight's fallen body at a distance. She neither sought nor fell upon the site by chance, but lived her life as a ripe, round circle that far surpassed the brief tastes of happiness they shared.

Though she could not grieve, at last she honored him with forgiveness.

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