| Proof (Gwydyon) [Southern Scotland coast, c. late fourth century BCE] |
[23 Dec 2007|09:38pm] |
Grianstad an Gheimhridh. Winter solstice. Math's celebration - sure to last days at least - had given Arian the perfect opportunity to slip away unnoticed. It had gone very well. First, she'd made it outside. Then she'd made it to the stables. Then she'd stolen a page's clothing, and though it did not fit her well enough to be her own, the tall, thin boy was certainly as close a fit to her as she was ever going to find. And then, hidden under the grimy cap and icy mud she rubbed into her skin, she shouldered her carefully-prepared pack and fled from the rings of bonfires.
Too often, she'd watched her brothers go off to hunt or to war. But no matter how much she asked, she was never permitted to go along with them. The tedium, the intrigue, the politics of court did not intrigue Ari. She had mastered that game years before. But the wilderness, the wilds that her brothers - that Gwydyon - told great tales about, now that was a worthy goal indeed. Solstice would cover her departure, and hopefully her return as well. She headed north, following the coast up as quickly as her stolen horse could manage. It was more than what her brothers had told her, more than the heroic tales. She understood, in that first night and day, the appeal they found in the great spread of the open wilds. This was freedom.
Huddled against the cooling corpse of the horse she'd taken north with her, she wondered just how things had managed to go so wrong so quickly. The landscape changed the further she traveled, growing steeper, rockier... She hadn't encountered such land before, and though it was fiercely beautiful, she found it more treacherous than she'd reckoned. The second afternoon, winter turned vicious, sleeting down sheets if ice that blew nearly vertically from the west. When in the blinding mess of precipitation her horse caught its hoof a hidden crevices, she'd been driving the beast too hard and too fast in search of some form of shelter. Its neck was broken in the fall.
For Arian's part, she'd hit her head hard enough to stay unconscious for some time. When she woke again, it was in a pool of ice and snow. Night had fallen; the stars and moon were obscured from her view by stormclouds that refused to break. She was hurt in other places, but she couldn't feel more than a general sense of not-right. Perhaps the cold was a blessing after all. Nevertheless, she shoved her back harder into the side of her fallen steed and pulled the soaked woolen cloak more tightly around her shoulders. She was shaking miserably, and her shoulder and ankle ached every time she moved or put pressure on it. The storm would let up soon, she was sure.
And then...
And then...
It was too cold; her mind was too numb. When morning came, she would think of something. She was sure of it.
|
|
