We walked down the track, as on the previous day, as though nothing had happened.
How we pretended! Our eyes turned to the grass beneath our feet, our ears splayed, our footsteps falling lugubriously one by one, as though independently from our wills, as though there were nothing to say nor any issue to be discussed. But the agitation, given no form in our motions, resided in our heads, such that I was not aware of anything around me, not aware that we weren’t checking the call boxes when they approached, and just moved on and on, the scenery changing around us without our noticing, our thoughts shifting their forms even more rapidly.
I dragged my feet forward and nowhere, now hastily, now slowly, now wanting to strike out and look for her, now wanting to wait around to see if she was near.
While we were walking, I thought about that final encounter, how maybe I could have defended myself, defended her more effectively. Every so often, when a regret came to me, when a past action showed itself to me as so clearly false that I winced at what I saw to be the obvious mistake in my conduct, no matter how unrealistic the said alternative I was contemplating, my leg would surge with pain, and I would have to stop, sit down, and catch my breath. When this happened, the pegasus would either come back, sit down next to me, and thereupon we would spend the night as on that night out of the tunnel if it was late; or, especially when she was the most consumed in thought, she would continue down the track regardless of me, and I could do nothing but gasp while watching her ever-shrinking form drift away into the dying light of that day.
In the former case, while the pegasus was establishing the necessary preparations for a bivouac, I would excuse myself under a pretext and limp off into the woods. When I was out of earshot, I would drop my facade, and with my mate in my mind, my strength would come back to me. I would climb—and if my insolent splinted leg complained, I would compensate it with my good wing—to the highest tree, and then scan the sky, the horizon, the forest, all the while shrieking: “Elision! Elision! Tell me where you’ve gone!” and my voice would rustle some animal in the trees, would cause some insignificant tremor or disturbance somewhere among the living, and then from the top of that bough I would fling myself, with exposed body, with closed eyes, with extended forelegs, with one wing sending me into frenzied spins, such that I could see nothing and could feel only the blood rushing to my head, expecting as I was to feel that soft, warm flesh I had once nuzzled in the humid atmosphere of a wooden cabin as hay broke beneath us—but only tantalizing tree boughs, only sharp thorns; only deceptive leaves which, in the wind, looked so much like twitching wings! Time and again I was torn apart by those merciless branches, such that every perceived opportunity, with its excitement and every inevitable disappointment that followed, with its fall, pain, and wounds—these all felt like that first fall from the city of diamonds. Then I would return, dirty, bleeding, and scratched. If Fluttershy noticed anything, she didn’t say.
These emotional and physical punishments and trials I would endure, and did, and had, again and again, just to be able to see her, feel her. I paid for my searching attempts in the form of that exhausted but too tired to sleep state in which I walked down the track toward the end of the earth during the day, in which all my energy was devoted to thoughts of what happened, of her, of what I could have done, and of how happy we ought to have been, even if it had just been the two of us forever. But night was when my strength came back, strength I could have used to ease my mind and to get some sleep I desperately needed, which I would instead use to recollect my ecstasies, to roll on the grass as though it were hay, to imagine that if I leaned over I could touch her right there beside me, to make up words that she could say to me, to enact the course of our lives which had been wholly shared in that instant together beneath that translucent afternoon light.
This gave me comfort for a few nights. For the days, I could close my eyes to remember and pretend, walking down that track which I was now convinced would never end; and, occasionally and without warning, my fatigue would lift, my somber mood morphing into an ecstatic one, and I would plunge headlong through the forests, crying: “Elision! Elision! Tell me where you’ve gone!”
Where was she? Was she hurt? Was she alive? If yes, why did she not respond to my cries, which she no doubt would have heard and in which she would have felt my despair?
As we walked, these questions would recur; and, finding no answers externally, I would manufacture them for myself, which began as hopeful and optimistic platitudes: She was fine. She just had to rest a bit for her injury; or maybe she couldn’t hear me because she was tired and could barely walk, but she was keeping pace with us—after all, I knew she wouldn’t let me out of her sight, no matter how much it hurt!
More sleepless nights passed, which I always spent the same way. My teeth began to hurt; my legs ached; I would drift off while walking, stumble, fall, and barely catch myself up again. The questions persisted, growing more menacing the more distance I covered: What if she bore offspring—my offspring? Would she have the energy? How would she feed them, protect them, if I couldn’t find her? I knew that it was probably not the right time of year for mating, which most likely explained her initial resistance to me, and we were together only once, so the chances were thus made even more unlikely, but still . . . it wasn’t unheard of . . .
*
The expanse of forest in which we’d been walking ended. I could tell that we’d walked into another partition of the land—not from the markings on any map, but because behind was Elision, and in front would be to leave her. If I walked any farther, I would have to give up my chances of finding her, my noon expeditions and my midnight searches; and the wind rustling the bushes would be nothing but wind, the chirps of birds and animals nothing but sounds, and the shapes the foliage would make in the evening nothing but shadows—everything but my Elision, who, as much I wanted her to, could not and would not supplement the need I saw in everything.
The pegasus asked why I’d stopped. She looked sorrowful as she urged me once more, as though she knew what I was feeling, what my hesitation was, and as though she were expressing understanding and sanction of any choice I might make. A step in her, the pegasus’s, vague direction, which all my actions in the past had been made toward, would be to leave Elision, alone, injured, without comfort, to deprive myself of her, to not put whatever I had left in me to look for her, to put everything in the desultory thoughts ahead, to don the title of Brother Commander, to shed that of dearest little brother—all that in a single step farther east: a single step and I would shoulder my old, burdensome responsibility and mission at the expense of the new raptures, which I had just tasted and now yearned for with all my soul, which I would have to give up if I wanted to continue to convince myself that my family was not truly gone and dead and that all my efforts, my injuries, hadn’t been in vain.
The pegasus walked on, letting herself trail out of my sight, as though leaving me to my selfish hopes.
I turned, one last time, to the expanse behind me. “I’m coming back for you!” I cried. “Wait for me. Don’t worry!
“I’ll be there for you!”
I spoke these last words, though too quiet for Elision to hear, because I didn’t know how to express their meaning in our language—but I couldn’t let myself leave them unsaid.