title: flight
author: teri
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 21:55:36 -0400

The brisk wind rushed by her, tearing at her clothes and whipping the dark
strands of her hair against her face in frantic lashes. Beneath her the
stallion's muscles pulsed as his long legs reached for the next meter ahead.
Her eyes stung, dried by the airy flight, and she clung tightly to the
stallion's ruddy neck. The shouts behind her, the sing of an arrow striking
the ground beside them and then sliding swiftly out of sight as they
continued on, the fierce cry of the Steel as they blocked the trail- these
things she squeezed out of her mind as fast as she could, her attention on
the horse as tightly as her cheek was pressed to his sweating neck. Eyes
closed fast, she thought fervently of speed, of strength, of determination-
all good things she could muster within herself and the beast she had
wrapped herself around.

It seemed unreal- the adrenaline high that made her limbs quiver, the earth
beneath the hooves eroding backwards like the tide, the thick taste of fear
and sickness sliding back from the figure in front of her, and washing Teri
as she rode in its wake.

An arrow grazed the side of the saddlebag and buried itself into the rising
earth. The sudden fear she felt sat low and slick in her stomach even as she
fought against the reality pushing, clanging, screaming to follow them as
they fled.

It had been minutes since the handsome general had reared his horse into a
gallop, the stream of mirrored soldiers following the direction of his
golden head. It felt like hours in the blurr of sight and sound. When would
it end? when the quickening breath of the stallion came sharp and his mouth
streamed foam behind him? would they ride that hard, that long?

She could not look behind her- she envisioned her fear and the fear gathered
from Stana, slick and oily, as a pale olive globe held pressed against her
stomach- she imagined it contained, roiling against the mold of her mind-
unbidden came the image of one face whose young but hardened eyes were
brushed by strands of firelit hair- the sting of her eyes was the prickling
wind, she told herself- and the familiar fury engulfed her fear, feeding on
the fatty emotion as it had always done and would again-

She curled, tightened against the stallion, face clenched in a simmering
anger that colored her pale skin blush. If the stallion sped faster, she did
not know it as she sought to burn the images her mind had born.

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"The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The
second is to look things in the face and know them
for what they are." -Marcus Aurelius

Teri Champ
Vassar College, Box 1763
Poughkeepsie, New York 12604-1763
x3089

http://vsa.vassar.edu/~m4m

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