For the Sky (DISCONTINUED)

18 - A Generous Word

He was handsome and ethereal, exactly as he was described in texts, depicted in paintings, glorified in songs, and even greater than that. Yet something in his face read of only warmth and kindness - he did not intimidate, did not give off an air of grandeur. I did not feel the need to bow to him, to avert my eyes, to dip my head, but rather I wanted to rush to him, and if I still had wings, I'd wrap them gently around him and hold him close, like a brother.

"What is there to look at?" I managed a weak smile in his direction. I thought that I couldn't feel joy at all anymore, but seeing him here made me hope that perhaps this meant that I could just pass on, or better yet, I was already dead - and the thought of that relief excited me more than you could ever imagine.

"How you've grown," Crocus looked me up and down. He didn't have pupils, but unlike a Ceffyl Dwr, his milky eyes weren't dull and bulging from an emaciated head, but rather softly a-glow amidst a handsome face.

"Grown? Have I?" I rolled my shoulders, a phantom feeling of my feathers shifting against my back sent shivers up my spine. "I think I've shrunk."

"You've grown in mind, child, in wisdom." Crocus drifted from where he hung in midair down onto the balcony and then landed on the surface in front of me, although silently - an apparition. "As have I, truthfully."

"How wise could I be if I fell for what might've been the most obvious betrayal that horsekind has ever laid eyes on?"

"You are wise now. We can't become wise without making mistakes, child. The greater the mistakes that we live through, the greater we then become. Why don't you come with me?"

"To where? Have I died?"

"No, not yet - you are brimming with a life yet to be lived to the fullest. No, I'd just like to show you something. Touch your nose to mine, please, child."

And I did as I was told. His muzzle was solid and smooth, and so incredibly soft and warm - it reminded me keenly of my mother's. In a blinding flash of white, the surface beneath vanished, as did the clear sky, and instead we were on muddy ground, with the deafening song of crickets, cicadas, toads, and frogs all around. The deserted kelpie kingdom.

"I haven't had a chance to materialize and see how things were going for a good while now," Crocus began, looking up at the spare pieces of sky filtering through the trees. "I am not a dealer of justice - I'm simply a creator, a conduit. I am the energy that exists and binds horses throughout, and that energy, as you well know exists in the form of direct, physical energy, obtained from fresh grass and a well-trained shoulder, and also the energy of life, compassion, happiness - social energy that creatures disperse amongst each other. For I am all at once everywhere, I do not get to see the finer details.

"But what had happened to Sonder, what had happened to you, child, that is something that shook the whole world enough that it would be only foolish of me not to take notice. It gave me incentive to rise and see the full picture for myself, for once, to see the fine brushstrokes on the ever-stretching canvas, and I don't think that I can quite explain how appalled I was with what's happened... for one, this place."

"Frin was a loyal member of our company," I said, not knowing where the comment came from. "I suppose she joined us because of boredom, but she went out of her way to help us."

"That she did. I do not blame her - or, I should say, I do not fault her for her efforts. She swam in the great ocean where she knew that I couldn't see her and she convinced that sweet young Ceffyl Dwr of yours to not flee in the middle of the night."

"Did she?"

"Frin has been a wise and caring diplomat since she first materialized in the depths of these murky waters. Perhaps too caring, and too diplomatic - too straightforward, and as such, that doomed her into thinking that she knew what was best for everyone. But I'll tell you this - she had a point."