ssendam teiuQ

R I X E N The mare stopped speaking, her one good eye coming to rest on me. She stood still, except for her eye, which I could see was rotating back and forth along my striped hide as she examined me carefully. She appeared very focused, like a thick cloud fogged her mind she was on the verge of lifting it. I watched as her bony sides heaved in and out with every ragged, rapid breath. I didn’t like being under such close examination. It made every one of my blue-grullo hairs crawl.  Everyone is important. What?! Of course everyone was. What kind of a statement was that? Everything she said seemed to have been pulled from thin air. Only a moment ago she had asked me if I knew who lived here. I didn’t know, but instead of answering my question the mare began on another new topic of discussion. Irritation had started to grow ever so slowly within me, but I tried not to let this show. It was difficult to follow everything she said, or even to try to make sense of any of it. After realizing she might never start talking sense, I simply gave up trying. Some things were meant to confuse me, I supposed. The sooner I accepted this fact, the better off I’d be. I didn’t respond to the statement. I didn't know what to say, and besides, she would probably ignore my words and go on rambling. No need to waste the breath. I watched as the ancient’s entire stature changed in a matter of seconds, as if she had examined me, drawn some sort of conclusion, and now was changing how she would interact with me. I didn’t know what it was. Perhaps it was that she stood up a little taller, or pulled her shoulders back, or her cataract-covered eye gleamed with a new light. Something changed. I sensed it. The mare looked almost thoughtful? Until now, she had not seemed capable of much in-depth thought. She came off more like one of those old crazies that a herd pitied enough not to outcast, but didn't exactly want sticking around either.  Just when I was growing hopeful that we might have a proper conversation, the glimpse of coherence vanished. The grey mare almost turned to leave, shifting her weight forward and starting to move away from me. She must have gone back on that decision, though, because the motion of her bony limbs came to a halt and she began to speak again, for some reason she chose to talk about time. I would have been very annoyed if she had actually turned and walked away mid conversation. If you could call such interaction a “conversation” that was. Sure, a few words were exchanged, but that was about where the similarities ended. More like the strange woman was conversing with herself and I was sort of just ...here. She hadn't even bothered to introduce herself yet. Her words were choked with what came across to me as disdain. Though I said nothing, I thought about what she said. Time was indeed a funny thing. Sure, it was how one catalogued events, past, present and future. But time was almost like an illusion, one that horses' brains applied to the universe so that they could survive a linear existence. I was not even sure that I fully understood it. Maybe time did not exist. Maybe it was in fact meaningless. In the Rift, surely such a thing was possible. Most anything was. My mind ached thinking about it.  At the mention of the Metus, my ears swiveled forward, keen to hear more. Perhaps she would elaborate, I thought, the smallest amount of hope rising deep within in my chest. Difficult as it was, I decided to give another attempt at conversing with the mare. She seemed to have snapped out of her madness again, and I wanted to see if she might finally yield an answer. As a result, I talked rather quickly, hoping to catch her in this sane state. It was as if she constantly fluctuated between a state of madness and lucidity, and the key was to catch her at the right time. I shook my head no. "I have heard of it once." I answered, thinking back to the Matron’s mention of the creature when I had been at the lake. "I’ve never seen one, though. Nor have I been to the Green Labyrinth before, though I’ve been told it’s a beautiful place. The Labyrinth crawls with danger too, I’m sure, as does the rest of the Rift. What does lie at the heart?" "Talk." they heard me singing and they told me to stop quit these pretentious things and just punch the clock

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