[Witches' Horses] Falcons' Feathers
Title: Not Again.
'Verse/characters: Witches' Horses; Falcons' Feathers: Irina
Prompt: 'some kind of emergency in space' - non list request
Word Count: 265
Notes: the second of her three sets of iron shoes, staves and caps. Prompted by a poll response.
She thought it was a nightmare, at first. The cold, the darkness, the shrill sound of something mechanical tearing--then she was rolling out of her bed and lunging for the emergency coat she'd bought after the first time, muttering "not again, not again, not again--"
The horse wouldn't respond to her voice, unless the sluggish shudder to below-right counted, after she screamed at it.
"Blades, gone, feet, near-gone--what hit us?" she demanded of the darkness, not expecting an answer as her hands flashed over the mirrors by the saddle. The horse still responded to knee pressure--she'd have sworn it felt drunk if she didn't know that horses couldn't get drunk--but reins were as black as the panels.
"I fixed this. I did. We replaced everything that failed, and checked the things that didn't twice, remember?"
The horse said nothing, and she slumped down over the panel, trying not to cry. Frozen tears were no help--she'd learned that last time.
As silence descended again, she stifled a desire to yell, scream, anything to fill the void with something living. Because this wasn't the small warm breathing silence of a happy horse. This was the silence of the dead, and the damned dead besides--
Something was singing, out there in the dark.
And her horse was responding, in a voice that sounded like her lover's.
"Stand with your back to the woods, and your front to me--"
"Oh, no," she breathed, air puffing out in a cloud of visible white as lights outside grew bright, outlining a terem only half-there. "Not again."
'Verse/characters: Witches' Horses; Falcons' Feathers: Irina
Prompt: 'some kind of emergency in space' - non list request
Word Count: 265
Notes: the second of her three sets of iron shoes, staves and caps. Prompted by a poll response.
She thought it was a nightmare, at first. The cold, the darkness, the shrill sound of something mechanical tearing--then she was rolling out of her bed and lunging for the emergency coat she'd bought after the first time, muttering "not again, not again, not again--"
The horse wouldn't respond to her voice, unless the sluggish shudder to below-right counted, after she screamed at it.
"Blades, gone, feet, near-gone--what hit us?" she demanded of the darkness, not expecting an answer as her hands flashed over the mirrors by the saddle. The horse still responded to knee pressure--she'd have sworn it felt drunk if she didn't know that horses couldn't get drunk--but reins were as black as the panels.
"I fixed this. I did. We replaced everything that failed, and checked the things that didn't twice, remember?"
The horse said nothing, and she slumped down over the panel, trying not to cry. Frozen tears were no help--she'd learned that last time.
As silence descended again, she stifled a desire to yell, scream, anything to fill the void with something living. Because this wasn't the small warm breathing silence of a happy horse. This was the silence of the dead, and the damned dead besides--
Something was singing, out there in the dark.
And her horse was responding, in a voice that sounded like her lover's.
"Stand with your back to the woods, and your front to me--"
"Oh, no," she breathed, air puffing out in a cloud of visible white as lights outside grew bright, outlining a terem only half-there. "Not again."