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// Summer Lovers, Lost Then Found 
// Story: Let It Grow 
// by themoontonite 
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How can I tell you I love you? How, indeed, do I profess a feeling beyond my body when it’s all I am? When it’s all any of us are? Maybe with my joints, my ruffled feathers and failing breath as we wind down to a meadow handpicked by you, goddess of my spring and fountain of my life; I will love you as best I can.

As we come to rest there is a picnic, set to replace the one we lost a moon ago. That’s your excuse, at least, but the way your face disappears behind your mane tells me otherwise. My heart speaks and tells me it’s not a bid to redo but a test of your inner love. If I could walk around inside that vault, to lay a hoof on its firm walls, to be complete in the depth of affection of another mare? The day wraps around my mind and you wrap yourself around me and I unwind. I spiral, a dizzied flier into your waiting hooves, and you catch and meet me there, in the place where the world softens and slows. You smile, and I see a home for me in your heart.

The time it's taken, the decades gap left in our love by crushing uncertainty stings like the morning sun in too-tired eyes. I find it hard to grasp sometimes, like trying to hold ozone between my hooves, but with you it eases. The soft sunsong of your coat, the gentle purr of your voice against me as you lean into my collarbone, your hoof braced against the checkered blanket; all of it swims into focus.

The time was worth it. The time was a test of loyalty, a test of kindness, a test of the bond between lovers forged in summer skies. One could consider it a testament. It’s a trophy, something I can point to and exalt. Look! See, then, how I loved her through it all? See how it was made easy not by my own merit but by the merit of the unyielding sunshine of her soul? See now how it and she wraps around me, compressing those years into a single dense moment, a singular kiss as the birds sing our praises? Her praises.

I’d sing them too, if I could.







I have never believed in kindness. Not in the way others believe. It moves through me, like I'm an avatar of the softer side of the world. There is no need to believe in what is inside you already. I simply am and kindness is, and we move through each other like long, thin wings through summer air; thick with the humidity of unspent rain. I save my belief for the multitude of things that are outside me, that I cannot hold the way I hold you; cradled close to my warm chest when the sun has done its time and slips away to make room for the moon.

We breathe in tandem and I feel the wind of life slip from me to you, then around again; a beautiful cycle guided by fate and made real through flesh and blood. Your sleepy murmurs and shuddering tremors of dreamed movement are percussion in the song your body plays for me as I nestle against you. The hum of your blood, the gentle thrum of your heart, it all plays in a time signature only you and I are privy to.

For a long time, I was lost. I thought I had lost you too, in the haze of a too-low voice and a too-short name. In that empty space, that meaningless time, nothing seemed to fit right. Nothing but the names you gave me. There was a sturdiness evidenced in your friendship even then. There was something within me yet unknown but you must’ve seen it. There is no way you didn’t feel the me waiting to be born as you shielded the me that still lived from the world around her. You were the first pony to see me for who I was.

I’ve told you as much and you just laugh. You say I’m silly, that you were just doing what was right, but I know from the way the corner of your eyes tug that you are moved. It’s hard not to be honest around you, to stop myself from baring the tangled thorns of my heart. You’ve never once flinched from the parts of me I feel are too ugly or too heavy to bear. When we are alone we speak a secret language, of quiet glances and fluttering feathers that stir the honey of our thoughts.

I love our secrets, our special places and thoughts and feelings that only we high fliers have access to. I love your quiet moments - like patient storms - just as much as I love your thunder and lightning, your boisterous blue against blue. The sky is jealous of your hue, rainbows envy the colors you paint across the sky with your movement, and I feel neither jealousy nor envy as you alight in front of me with sweat streaking your brow and a smile writ large across your face.

I only feel peace and kindness and something that is both inside and outside me: love.