She almost lost her courage, tempted to ride past them. She flushed uncomfortably warm when she stopped before the group. But seven years had passed. How much longer could this endure? Ignoring his farmers, she focused on her father. The Patron faced the manor on the highest hill, the line of his rugged features even more handsome in profile. The girl had to force herself to remain, staring at the Patron until he finally turned to her. When the girl met her father’s light brown eyes, she saw the same emptiness she had her entire life and the pain clawed through her again. In that moment, she knew nothing would ever change. There’d be no Carnivals, no balls, no masquerades. She was an outcast and that was all she would ever be.
The farmers began to shuffle the ground, averting their eyes from their Patron and his daughter. Their silence echoed across the fields, but the girl thought she might break apart from the mute scream trapped inside. Tears stung the back of her eyes, but she refused to cry. She kicked her mount and left her father and his devoted tenants behind. The girl was desperate to lose herself in the run, shouting at the stallion to go faster, faster. She couldn’t make herself disappear, but lost herself in perpetual motion.
She didn’t recognize where she was when the stallion slowed down. The grasses were long, grazing along her feet while her mount cut a swathe through them, coming to the edge of a forest where the freshly sprouted leaves reflected the morning light softly and the song of birds could be heard from the trees. She turned the horse around and almost laughed out loud when she saw the river and the Ancient Grove far southeast of her. The girl hadn’t been to this place in years, the northwest border of the Abandoned Valley where life returned once inside the trees.
Memories of the place flooded through her, an onslaught of euphoria that burst the girl into laughter, even with the clawing inside her. It made a bittersweet ecstasy, as palpable as the days when she came here with the Horse Trainer who had come as a Vagabond. She could still see his face, the warmth in his golden brown eyes and smile. The girl remembered the wild gray colt the Trainer always rode, and wondered if the animal still ran in the Abandoned Valley. Then she recalled that day when the colt escaped her father’s stables and started to weep. The bliss that caught her unawares became a torment. She would never have that kind of joy again.