this new air feels hard to breathe, is this how it's supposed to be? if sweet dreams are made of these then why can't I be sure?
If Otem had the job of handing out leader titles, Aurelia's would have been the not-quite-what-she-seems. At almost every turn the golden mare zigged where Otem had expected her to zag. Perhaps that said more about Otem's inability to adequately judge others, but even if that was true, she really did think there was more to Aurelia than she let on. Maybe there was more to her than even Aurelia herself knew.
Although Otem's dapples emitted a faint glow, she looked positively bland compared to Aurelia. The golden mare looked like a trick of the light from far away, but as she neared Otem could see that it was no trick: Aurelia really was sparkling. It wasn't garish or ugly though, but delicate and eye-catching.
"Aurelia." Otem returned with a smile and a nod of her ram-horned skull. She waited for the older mare to laugh at the end of her suggestion, to show that it was clearly a joke. But the waiting stretched on, and on...Otem's head tilted slightly forward as if straining to hear the words that Aurelia didn't look like she was going to say. Haha, just kidding, or I think I'll lead the herd. "But a herd is-" She spluttered, trying to get her thoughts together. What was a herd, really? Just some sort of social construct - a contract that everyone implicitly signs to do certain things and act in certain ways...Was that all there was to it? Because if so, that's really all Otem was proposing with this meeting place. That everyone acknowledges it as their place, and would return with information and so on.
"- a herd has a god, doesn't it?" Otem finished, her lips finally catching up to her thoughts. "In Helovia, you couldn't just have a herd. That's why there were all those invasions ... a land had to have a god. Do you think it's like that here?"
Otem glanced around, as if expecting a god to actually come along and answer her question one way or another. Or perhaps an adultier-adult than Otem was. An adult like her father or Tembovu or one of the other great leaders she'd known about.
The Pinnacle
