There was something about the way she had said farewell that left a painful hitch in his side.
Dawn had stretched it's long ethereal fingers across the lower timber country of the Kawani lands, passing spots of shadow here and there, but drenching one particular meadow with light, making one sweat glistened figure almost glow in the early morning light. Trotting now, as he did every morning just as the sun peeked out from behind the dark mountains, Killian shook out his heavily braided mane and once again ran through the tragic series of events that.. in retrospect, he should have seen coming. The days before her final goodbye had been tense, even he could admit that much, but the months before that, when she had said (in the awful tone) that she had first started to feel like she was missing something in her life. He honestly hadn't the foggiest notion of where she was coming from.
Bonfire had been an integral part of his life for as long as he could remember, starting first as his best friend, and gradually evolving into something more.. or at least what he thought was something more. To his merry eyes, there wasn't a single step he would have redirected.. not even the various misadventures they had shared would have changed his overall opinion of the dark mare. She was everything to him, and upon reaching adulthood, he had promised to protect her from harm, and be with her until death bid them part...
But then, with that awful tone of voice, she had said that there was something on this bright sun drenched land he could not give her.
Freedom.
Killian had never thought of himself as the overly clingy sort, after all he had been raised to stand on his own four hooves and find the joy in the world only he could grant himself. He loved Bonfire, sure, and he missed her even now, but what ate at his soul wasn't her missing presence...
It was that awful tone of voice...
The one that said she hadn't ever loved him at all.
