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Date Posted: 18:04:20 11/13/01 Tue
Author: Kandarin & Neramii
Subject: horse whisperer?
In reply to: Rowan Silvertree 's message, "How may I worship thee?" on 22:47:51 11/11/01 Sun

(feel free to skim. I had the itch and had to write, but it doesn't really involve anybody but kandy and neramii...)

Kandarin finished with her bout of ravenous eating, ignoring Neramii after the shifter refused her multiple suggestions that she too engage in 'consumption of sandwich'. The amber-eyed woman dusted her hands off on her trousers and, finding nothing else of an entertaining quality, stood and left the room.

Of course, Neramii followed, and Kandarin hadn't expected any different behavior...yet she was glad of it, and conscious of it. She hadn't checked her horse all day, not since the morning before actually, and she knew Neramii liked being amongst the animals in the stables, too, so it seemed a fitting decision to visit the mare.

Who, not surprisingly, turned tail to the door of her stall and refused to look Kandarin in the eye, an obvious complaint of neglect.

"Now," Kandarin said, speaking aloud as she crossed her arms over the half stall door, resting her chin on her fists. "There's been all sorts of things going on." True, even if she hadn't particularly been a part of them.

Neramii smiled slightly, watching her odd new aquaintance speak to her horse. She knew that sometimes humans could gain a certain level of communication with their animal companions, and had even seen some who could mind-touch with all level of beings, but she shared a soul-deep connection to all living things, one of the reasons shifters were able to do what they could. There is a level beyond physical, where anything can be manipulated like clay. It's only a matter of tapping into it, and this the shifter race had accomplished long ago.

Discreetly opening her mind to the horse and the woman, Neramii absorbed - skillfully, mind, with no risk of detection - that this creature was more intelligent than most of her species. She'd noticed this in desert-bred animals, especially those so cherished by tribes as healthy mares...this one had probably been raised beneath the same blankets as the clan children, perhaps never seeing her own equine mother, drinking spirit milk formulated by a shaman, for those with the black colts were seen as holy by many cultures.

And so, she and Kandarin had a very basic understanding of one another, and a noteworthy one at that. However, for the smallest moment and so that no one would suspect it had been her that created it, she widened the connection between the two for a brief moment.

Kandarin blinked. A sudden warmth wrapped itself around her. Her skin tingled, her spine prickled, and the most fantastic, undescribable sensation enveloped her entire being. The feeling each of us has of stress, desparation, however buried or masked, fell away. Worry evaporated. Loneliness, that deep feeling with which almost all sentient species have learned to cope with until it melted to an unnoticeable measure, disappeared. To her core, Kandarin was a part of the world around her.

A rippling mass of light that seemed almost physical brushed the back of her brain. Her eyes still looked upon her surroundings, but they seemed brighter, fuller, richer, and then everything disappeared in a blink, and the world was normal, discouragingly normal once more. The mare turned to her, ears pricked, nudging her fingers in a gesture of understanding.

Neramii's lips twisted in a physical gesture of her irritation. Meddling with the minds of another was not something she was entitled to do, and all she'd meant to do was bridge the unsurmountable gap between horse and human...and what she'd done, consequently, was something that ran a little deeper.

"I'm sorry. That...that feeling you probably just had. It was I. Forgive me..."

Kandarin stared at her, her hand tangled in the forelock between her horse's ears. "Forgive you?" The awe that rang through her voice made Neramii flinch. "You mustn't be serious? I want to thank you a thousand times over! That was the...the most wonderful thing I've ever..."

Neramii shook her head, moving backward desparately. "No. It is not proper. I..."

"Neramii, no one is going to execute you for it," Kandarin said, giving the shifter pause, albeit with a brow skeptically cocked. "Remember...the times are different."

"But the elders of my people..."

"There aren't any left."

Kandarin bit both lips between her teeth and slammed her lids closed. "I'm sorry."

Neramii stared blankly at her, effectively silenced, but only momentarily. "No. Perhaps you're right."

"I had no right to..."

Neramii held up a hand for silence. The black mare snorted and moved away from Kandarin's fingers, which had stilled at the words she now so regretted.

"Please, Neramii. It was just...so wonderful...I felt alive for the first time in my life." She laughed shortly, cocking her head. "What did you do?"

Neramii was surprised. "Nothing so much. Just...prodded a little." She was still hesitant, and her glance was wary, though revealing nothing more than the animals stabled, lounging comfortably in their straw.

"Do you see that...all the time?"

Neramii turned back to her. "Yes. I suppose...I can't see directly through your mind and senses, but I percepted enough to assume that what you saw, I always see, on some level or another."

Kandarin let out a long breath. "Doesn't it...overwhelm you?"

"No. But then, it has been there my entire life."

Kandarin nodded, stepping back from The Mare. "Let's get back inside." Without the warmth she'd so recently experienced, she felt somehow cold, small, exposed. Neramii, catching onto these mangled emotions, curbed another swell of regret in her actions and nodded, following the dark-haired native back into the palace.

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