Post by Swede on Mar 6, 2010 11:11:44 GMT -5
Name: Ela (EH-la)
Age: 5 years
Breed: Russian Arabian
Height: 15 hh
Colour: Rose grey (ee/Aa/Gg)
Eye Colour: Soft brown
Gender: Female
Markings: Star
History:
Ela. A stranger among these lands, with a strange intonation to her words, for those who ever hear them. But she does not often speak now. And she is soft; never a sharp sound or action; even if startled, the swift reactionary movement does not seem to cut the air, but flow through it… just a smudge of grey. Blurred around the edges, as though she were a fading ghost. Perhaps that is all she really is.
Far away, things were different. She was young; innocent, naïve, but happy. And then… things began to happen. The flock knew of humans, were owned by them; most of them had been touched, some ridden, but the majority were simply set to roam and breed, so that their offspring could be captured and tamed. And then they came, with their roaring trucks and burning ropes, shattering Ela’s blissful existence. She was taken away. It frightened her, and for some time she did not speak to the others.
But she was not the first to be brought back to live in the stables, and she recovered from her shock, despite being the youngest of those captured. And, in the end, she did not stay there long. Of the young horses, the colts stayed to be trained, as well as the less ideal fillies. But Ela was one of the prettier ones, so she was turned back out to function as broodmare. She was three years old then.
And then… what happened then? She is not sure. It was beyond her range of understanding. Great machines she had never seen before came, grinding up her meadows, frightening the semiwild herds. And those horses who had been kept by the men who owned the herds, they came from the other direction, with humans on their backs, trying to fend off these machines. But a horse and his rider, no matter their skill or unity, cannot measure up to metal monoliths which rained fire upon the fields.
She remembers explosions, and the machines steadily rolling forward despite the riders’ defensive attempts. She remembers her brother, older than herself with a young man on his back, be suddenly shredded by that fire spat out by the machines. She remembers his blood coating her head to toe, its sharp smell penetrating her paralyzed fear. Most of all, she remembers the anguished screams of the dying. And then… she ran.
Ela had been bred, but nothing ever came of it. Perhaps the shock of the tragedy killed her little one before it even took any recognizable form inside her. This she has mostly forgotten, though; she simply ran, until she could run no further. The little mare never spoke to others, or thought a single thought. She simply survived, on some form of autopilot. Two years have soothed the mental scars, but she is not the same, happy little filly she once was. Now she is afraid, and distant. A herd cannot revive her former spirit- nothing truly can- but perhaps it could offer her sanctuary from her inner demons.
