Phase 2 - A Trust Forged At Dusk

The sunsets had become their time.

The blue of the sky had melted into amber and dandelion, spilling through the clear glass of the arena windows, illuminating the white sandy floor and the particles floating in the air like prismatic fairies.

Tanwen sat, partially hugging her legs, in the middle of the glowing arena, the sand around her having long since melded to her shape, as if the arena was cradling her, soothing her, reminding her what one got with time and patience.

She watched as Ascot waltzed across the arena floor, legs moving in perfect tandem. Each floating step stirred up more dust, more illuminated fairies to join him in his dance. It would have been a spell woven in motion, if it weren’t still for the ever present deadness in his eyes. They had made tremendous progress - Ascot no longer feared the sight of an arena, if only from the outside, he was responsive to her presence in the stable and field - but the vacant, lifeless chill in his eyes lingered like the dusk they worked so often in together, starting the moment the pair stepped foot in the arena. No longer would he respond to the sound of her voice, her physical movements, not even when she would slip the halter over his head to lead him back into the fallen dark, when the twilight had finally faded. Only then, when the arena faded into the gentle, motherly embrace of night, would the Loshenka she had learned to love start to emerge. The light would return to his eyes, willingness to his movements, and the spark to his soul. It broke her to see that radiance fade from him, as much as being the one to bring it back made gratitude swell in her throat - for when he healed, so did she.

She looked at the orange-brushed sand on the arena floor, a desperate wish preparing to form on her lips as she closed her eyes.

A few strands of hair curled around her face like tears, dancing their own grief-stricken waltz.

When she opened them, now peering over towards Ascot, the sparkles of light caught in her bi-colored eyes, a reflection of the light caught in her Loshenka’s velvet depths as he continued to float across the floor, the light still the only sign of life.

Two words left her lips, in a whisper shaped like a prayer,

           “Come here.”

It was a desperate wish, an aching cry made in the trembling, fading, golden light of the arena. The wish she had no words for had manifested into them despite the odds, and she hoped that that defiance would persevere, if only for a few more moments.

For just long enough.

It did.

The light in his eyes was no longer a mere reflection of the “fairies” floating in the arena, but coming from somewhere deep inside. From his soul. The light seemed to transfer to Tanwen’s own soul, lighting warm hope in her chest like the blood cascading through her heart.

The heady hope only became warmer as Ascot drifted closer, the graceful movements of his dance turned hesitant and slow, but forward moving nonetheless.

Tanwen was as still and stoic as a mountain, not even a blink nor a breath disrupting her transfixed immobility.

So she stayed, until Ascot came to a halt in front of her, pupils dilating as his eyes met hers, before he too became a statue.

The pair of them stared for what was perhaps only a few moments in reality, but what to them felt like an eternity. Understanding passed between the two of them like water, Ascot having taken his leap of faith in response to her call, now asking her to make hers in response to his response.

Tanwen lifted a hand with the same carefulness she had put into every fragile moment of work with him. She spoke no more words, but let her hand raise and then hover in front of his nose, finger outstretched in a mimicry of Michelangelo’s Adam and God. Outside, the dawn sunk lower, giving way to a night filled with dying stars, the wind whispering a gentle song of encouragement and something they couldn’t quite decipher.

Finally, after fate filled eternity had passed, Tanwen placed her tan palm flat to Ascots nose. Blue and black depths met wine stained purple, as the pair connected through touch, sight and soul. Here, Tanwen had asked and Ascot had been willing. Here, he had not been forced. Here, Ascot had been given for the first time in a long time, perhaps ever, a choice without consequences and he had made the choice to trust. And here, Tanwen had been given the choice to open her heart again, to let the festering wounds start to turn into scars, and she had made the choice to heal.

The wind slowed as the sky turned dark, the two elements now caught in their own dance, joyfully swirling together air and light, foreshadowing the one that would take place in the arena they surrounded. They danced, stirring up the fairies for one final celebration, before curling in on themselves, going where the elements go to sleep, while a wine charmed halter was slipped over a Loshenka’s head, a tan, warm with the fire-gold glow of dusk, still resting on a velvet nose.