The Slayer Of Warriors, first chapter

Let it never be said that Jemi was not insane. She was, in fact, very insane for many years of her life, and perhaps more than a little unusual for the rest of it.

She was not born a truly normal child, you see, for she was a pure-bred centaur come from two lines of equally pure centaurs. Her father was a warrior of many battles, and a slayer of many, and her mother was a fair young mare who had the power of Sight.

Perhaps it was this magic tendency running through her veins that made Jemi so liable to crack.

It is said that when Jemi was born the moon shuddered overhead, a terrible omen, and as Deserae screamed in her agony the ghosts around her wailed with her, adding to the noise and wracking spines. Deserae screamed out the visions that were flashing before her in a voice like that of the grave. Her mate held her head still as she gave birth, but his muscles twitched and shivers ran up his spine. But in truth, the moon never shudders, and ghosts rarely join the suffering of the living, and though it is true that Deserae’s cries were terrible, the only thing she saw behind her eyes were stars. She gave birth to a beautiful filly that looked just like her father, with deep brown coat and shining black mane. Deserae began to teach the child to weave enchantments, a centaur mare’s specialty, as soon as she could demand attention, which was almost immediately.

Jemi also showed a talent for the hunt, and for sparring. She grew strong mimicking her father and worked hard to be able to spar with the foals of other stallions. Most of these young warriors were her cousins, but they were so cruel! Maybe Jemi fell through a crack in any etiquette, being female and being strong—perhaps she offended their young egos. In any case, she often came home with bruises and cuts from an ambush laid for her, for she was too quick on her feet to be defeated in a fair spar. This happened often, accompanied by sneers and words meant to sting and leave scars on the mind.  Deserae would clean her wounds and do her best to heal her young filly’s angry pain, but there is only so much a mother can do, and kissing the wound will not always make it better. Jemi continued to grow, as young creatures will, and her senses grew very acute due to the frequent ambushes placed for her—beating on the filly became a sport frowned upon for the foals. The stallions of the tribe viewed their actions with disgust. To them, the female was the weaker of the genders and should be treated with respect, and though Jemi seemed to be an exception, she should still be respected for her femininity.

When her father’s muscles were growing loose with age, and his step grew pained in the winter, Jemi took on a more savage way of defense, and Deserae hated herself for this later in life: Jemi began to weave enchantments into the very grains of her weapons as she made them. The spear was guided to never miss; the arrows were wound with a spell to make them fly swift and silent, and even the cloths around her fetlocks were laced with an enchantment to give her speed. She gave herself tattoos.

These made her mother weep for her, because mares were not permitted to bear tattoos, and because they forever banned her from the mare’s circle, a very important part of centaur society in that tribe.

It was her fifteenth year when her Madness took hold of her, and her pure, volatile centaur genes spun out of control. She was walking from an open field into a strip of trees, from hunting ground to the path that took her back home, with a doe over her back and a bow in her hand. She heard a crunch as something heavy rested itself on a fallen branch and her heart began to pound beneath her breast. Her ears twitched and she held still, only her tail in motion to keep the flies off her quarters and away from the doe.

“I heard you,” she said to the centaur she could not see. “You may as well come out.”

She felt a sharp, driving pain in her flank and gasped, her eyes getting wide and a flash of heat coming to her head. She looked down at the arrow shaft protruding from her skin and the blood blooming from the wound. She pulled it out with another gasp and pressed her hand against the wound to stop the blood. There was a whistling sound and another dart of pain made her gasp. She pulled the arrow from her shoulder and took several deep breaths before speaking. Her voice was cracked and there was a vague sob behind it that made certain hearts guilty in their depths.

“This is how you fight?” she asked, gripping her shoulder and setting her bow on the ground and letting the doe slide off her back. “You won’t even let me see you? This is your honorable fighting?” there was another whistling and an arrow hit a tree behind her. She looked carefully at the arrow and bent one knee slightly to reach toward the bow on the ground. There was rebellion running in her blood, making it simmer and making her defensive and vengeful.

“You know they’ll hear about this,” she said as she picked up the arrows that were stained with her blood. “And I’ll show them your arrows. The elders won’t tolerate you firing on a filly.” She knocked an arrow and pulled the string back, holding it tight before letting it fly. A cry was heard in the flickering shadows of the trees.

“Are you alright?” asked a voice.

“She hit my cannon,” another voice replied, gasping. “I think it’s broken.”

“You stupid filly,” the first voice muttered, and another arrow flew past her ears.

“You become sloppy in your anger,” Jemi said as she pulled the arrow from a tree. “That could have been my skull.” She knocked her arrow and aimed into the darkness. “And now I know where you are,” she muttered as she let go and the arrow flew, hitting something with a tearing sound. The foal let out a cry of pain and set off running. Jemi turned, and pain flooded her shoulder and flank, making her angry. She pursued.

The foal had been hit somewhere in his leg, judging by his stumbling gait and the way he tumbled against trees. When he tried to jump a log he failed, and Jemi flew over him, blood dropping to his face from her flank. She turned around as he tried to stagger to his feet. She lifted one leg and dropped its full weight on his fetlock with a crunching sound, and he screamed.

“Why wouldn’t you just leave me alone?” she demanded, and as she towered over him he had no choice but to reply.

“I don’t know,” he cried.

Jemi’s eyes flashed and reared up and kicked him in the shoulder. “Tell me!” she shouted. “Tell me why I’m bleeding!”

But before he could even whimper she raised herself in her hind legs and came crashing down on his head.

There was a splash around her cannons and she backed away, panting and angry.

She stood there, looking at what she had done. The shattered skull, the crushed fetlock, the arrow-laden gaskin. There was a certain fascination that they held, and she could not look away, though her stomach reeled and she heaved onto the ground. Eventually she turned and limped away, as the vultures and crows were gathering. She stumbled into the village and into her mother’s hut with a weary countenance. Deserae gasped.

“Jemi, what did you do? Look at your legs!” she exclaimed and took her daughter’s arm, missing the flinch of pain that crossed Jemi’s face as she led her to a water basin.

“Oh, look at you,” Deserae moaned gently, and ran a wet cloth over Jemi’s cannons. She froze. “Jemi, what happened to your side?”

“An arrow…” Jemi sighed as her legs locked.

“Who’s arrow?” Deserae asked, drawing herself upright and looking at her daughter’s weary face. “Jemi?” she reached out to shake her but stopped upon seeing the wound in her shoulder. As she cleaned off the broken skin and tied a bandage around it, Jemi’s head rolled.

“I’m tired, mom,” she said foggily.

Deserae was in the middle of noting that Jemi had lost a lot of blood, but at the fading glimmer in her brown eyes and the nearly tearful expression on Jemi’s face she sent her to sleep. Later, her mate came in to ask if Jemi had seen a pair of young foals who had disappeared earlier in the day, but Deserae told him to let the filly sleep.

The foals were found the next day, around mid-afternoon, both with broken bones and one nearly unrecognizable for his mutilation, and the other alive but mad with pain. They were carried back to the village on the backs of warriors and the dead foal was placed in a hut without walls for public mourning. Deserae kept Jemi away from the mourning, saying that she was too weak but in reality trying to save her from a vision she had seen the night before. Sometimes these visions were beneficial.

The day after the mourning, a party was selected to find the murderer of the two foals, the party being made up of two of Jemi’s uncles, an older cousin, and her father. Jemi remained in her mother’s hut, slipping in and out of nightmares and desperately trying to tell her mother something, but Deserae always hushed her. She knew what her daughter had done—her visions had told her—and she wanted to remain untouched by the wickedness that stained her daughter. Finally the party came to Deserae’s hut, and she refused them entrance, saying that Jemi was sick inside and needed her rest. The stallions forced their way in anyway.
Jemi stood dozing in a corner; her torso leaned against a wooden post and her breast band gone.

“You could have at least given me time to make her decent,” Deserae chided and hurried over to Jemi, a fresh and unstained breast band in her hands. The stallions turned away in modest shame until Jemi was covered.

“Wake her,” Jemi’s father said.

“Why?” Deserae asked, blocking Jemi from the group, a hardened look in her eyes that only mothers can bear. The stallions held their ground, but their hooves shifted under them and their eyes told of their nervousness. Great is the strength and merciless is the wrath of a parent in defense of their young, and especially so for centaurs—they have both mouths and hooves with which to inflict wounds.

Deserae’s mate moved toward her slowly. “Jemi has committed a crime, Deserae,” he said gently. “She must be dealt with.”

“How do you know it was her?” Deserae snapped back. She had to tilt her chin upwards to look at her mate, but the fire in her eyes made her seem much taller than she was.

“Her arrows and a doe she felled were near the bodies,” her mate said.

Deserae stomped her front feet, forcing her mate to step back. “Do you know what my filly has been through?” she asked, a touch of resentful hate in her voice. “Do you know how many of your foals’ wounds I have cleaned from her body? How do you know it wasn’t self defense?” She watched the stallions with such intensity that they were silent for a time.

“I’m sorry,” her mate sighed finally, and ordered Deserae to be removed from the hut.

The mare flailed and left a broken bone in more than one stallion, including her mate, and cried out curses upon them and their children for as long as Jemi was remembered, but she was eventually removed. Upon her last instant in the hut she cried out Jemi’s name and woke her.

“Jemi! Jemi! Run!” she screamed. Jemi sought her mother’s eyes and began her struggle. She broke her father’s ribs in several places and shattered another stallion’s shoulder before they managed to restrain her. There were hobbles on her legs and arms when they dragged her out of the hut and before the elders.

There was much debate over what to do with the young filly. It might have been self defense, but no one could be sure as the only witness was still babbling about his brother and weeping with agony. Another witness was the filly’s mother, who claimed to have seen a vision of the occurrence, and though Deserae’s powers were great, no one trusted her to be unbiased.

Eventually it was decided that Jemi would be banished because it resulted in neither her possibly innocent blood nor her possibly brutal nature. She was blindfolded and placed on her side on a cart made especially for her, pulled by two silent mules and guarded by three stallions.

A day passed before they heard her coarse cries for water.

Another day passed before she woke enough to ask more water and to pester them with questions.

“Where am I?”

A stallion turned and glanced back at her. “En route to your place of banishment.”

“I am banished? What for?” she asked, her ears perking.

“You killed Dashir and crippled his brother,” the stallion replied. Jemi was silent for a while after this. There was relative quiet, save for the thudding of steady hooves and the creaking of the cart under Jemi’s weight.

“What about my mother?” she finally asked. “Is she alright?”

“She had to be restrained for your departure.”

“Was she hurt?”

“Only slightly,” the centaur said, and Jemi heard a slight smile in his voice. She began to thrash on the cart and the mules had to be halted so that it wouldn’t tip.

“What did you do to her?” Jemi demanded when the stallions came to hold her down. “Tell me!” The stallions simply tied her to the cart with ropes. Jemi began uttering curses that would destroy them, promises that Hades would slaughter them and their families, mumbling things in the language of the Faeries that made the stallions very nervous. They hurried on, but were wary of stopping in any shadow, lest the filly told the truth and had friends in the forests.

On the fifth day, after much fear and more cursing, a mountain rose up over them, dark and menacing to behold. The centaurs bribed a family of Dragon-Children to guard the filly until she died, and they agreed, though one left the mountain with a single scratch running from his flank to his shoulder from a rather flirtatious young female.

He had nightmares for a time about scaly human-dragons with spiked tails and vicious eyes. These nightmares later had him telling horror stories around the fire to young foals.

Jemi was placed into a cave, amid more questions and pestering. When one dragon-child’s hand slipped from her shoulder into a place she found to be personal, she cursed them with fire from Hades. The Dragon-Children, being very superstitious, begged her to remove the curse and promised to leave her in the hands of their Cousins. Jemi begrudgingly removed her curse as they removed her binds.

Their Cousin was an old dragon with many scars dotting his hide. He called himself Damon.

Damon watched Jemi grow, watched her breast band become worn until it tore, and watched Jemi slowly stop caring. He watched her try numerous times to kill herself and fail, and what scared him most was that he watched her slowly going insane from anger, bitterness and loneliness. She would often sit and stare at him, and he had the idea that she was picking out his weak points for future use. She etched things into the walls: curses; drawings of how she thought centaur life should be; spells of her own design; and random things toward the back of the cave that Damon could not make out clearly. Then, towards the end of her stay in the cave, she began to ask him why she was there in the first place, and he realized that she could honestly not remember, and watched her slowly recede into the innocence of the years she remembered as a child.

Meanwhile, there was a village below the mountain that constantly mocked the mountain’s imposing nature, possibly out of its own fear and paranoia – who would not be afraid of the terribly clever and dangerous creatures that lived there? The village was marked by a white coat and black manes; it was over bred and under studied, and as most centaurs, terribly superstitious. The Elders had even gone so far, out of fear for the lives of their people, to place the fortunes of the collective upon one filly when she was born, in retrospect a bad idea. The collective spent most of their lives protecting this filly, now a nearly grown mare, and quite lovely, though the elders refused to allow her to mate.

There were two young stallions of this tribe that had recently come of their status of warriors. Under a dare from those they perhaps should have ignored but were bent on impressing, they found themselves scaling the mountain, avoiding families of dragon-children and skirting the lairs of dragons. They were searching for a creature much like themselves that was rumored to live here, under guard lest it slaughter innocents. It was rumored to be a simple creature, but it was talked of like a monster, and it had intrigued the younger foals for many years, which is what had pressed them into daring the stallions in secret.

The stallions picked their way along a path the dragon-children kept only for the use of their less-agile visitors, squeezing through places meant for smaller creatures, unknowingly watched by ten golden and garnet eyes from above their heads. The trail made them uneasy, and they joked loudly to each other even as they drew their blades. They rounded a corner to come face-to-face with a dozing dragon sitting just outside a small cave entrance. They shuffled past him after a moment of heart-pounding pause and slid into the cave, ducking to enter.

There were two brown eyes that watched them enter with increasing agitation, watched their blades with itching fingers. There were arrows on their backs and bows strapped to their sides that made these eyes burn with lust. As the stallions studied the strange carvings on the walls, they began to hear a fast breathing, and a murmuring that gave them chills.

“Praise Artemis…” the mumblings said with a lustful tone. “Praise the goddess… you’ve brought me a bow,” the voice said, and the stallions turned around slowly as the bearer of this voice approached.

She was tall for a mare, and rather slight of bust, but her face was what caught the stallions’ attention. It was as pale as the silver moon, with dark red lips and shining dark orbs for eyes, and the shadows under those eyes seemed to be endless and seemed to beckon from the grave. Perhaps this perception of the mare was simply because of the darkness of the cave, or because of the pounding of their hearts, but nevertheless they drew their swords.

“And such beautiful blades,” the mare crooned appreciatively. Her fingers itched for their swords in a most obvious way. They held them tighter as they edged for the door. The foals had dared them to find the creature, not do battle with it.

They were almost out of the cave when the dragon shifted and caused them to jerk and look at him. There was a thunderous noise, and one of the stallions was on the ground with his blade in the mare’s hand.

“And so light…” she murmured as she brandished it. The fallen stallion struggled to get up without being noticed as his partner charged the mare, which dodged him and ran the blade through his flank. He screamed and fell as his partner knocked an arrow and aimed at the delighted mare as she turned on him.

“You brought me arrows, too?” she exclaimed as a shaft nicked her ear. She charged as he tried to knock another and kicked his chest into his spine in a hyper show of gratitude. She stooped to pick up his bow and fallen quiver as the stallion behind her staggered to his feet, blood pouring from the wound this insane filly had given him. As he tried to make it to the cave entrance she turned on him and charged again, and he, unable to run, was brought down as his partner had been.

“Are you tired?” the mare asked their corpses. “I’ll let you sleep.”

She took their swords and a bow, and all their arrows, and with this weaponry slew the dragon that guarded her in a bout of clear-mindedness. With his hide she made herself a dragon-skin breast band, sewn with other body parts and secured with one of his teeth. After this her insanity returned and she tried to rouse the dead stallions by offering them cave fish to eat. When this failed she wandered, lonely once again, out into the breaking dawn.

To the young dragon-child who was wandering past, she looked like a goddess of madness, with her mane disheveled and her eyes bright with the darkness of years of imprisonment. The sword slung at her side shone in the pink sunlight like a streak of ruby, and her breast band looked twice as maddening to him because of its relation to his kin. He scampered off to warn his family, but Jemi was too busy being confused by the daylight to notice.

She stayed on the ledge that bordered the entrance to her cave for most of that day, first trying to understand the sunlight, the warmth it gave her, and adjusting her eyes, then soaking it up and letting it warm her pale skin. As the warmth seeped into her blood, she began to recall the reason for her stay, though it came slow to her and she only recalled it in pieces, like an irritating puzzle.

What she remembered most clearly was her mother’s face when she had last seen it: angry, and terrified for her.

How many years had it been? How old was she? Why were there two broken stallions in the cave behind her? Some things she could not remember no matter how hard she tried. She picked over the stallions’ bodies and gathered that they were of a tribe and breed she had never seen before, but that was not surprising, considering her lack of apparent memory. The dragon she had fleeting memories of killing.

She finally settled on a plan to make her way down the mountain and to find her tribe, and if that horrible foal was still alive after all these years, she would kill him and anyone who got in her way. And she would see her mother again. So she picked her way down the path the stallions had traveled with little difficulty, save the dragon-children who came out to watch her. She, who shone like silver in the sunlight and who moved with remarkable grace, to them was a visiting demon come to survey the god’s lands. They beheld her with some fear. She watched them as she rose and fell on the path that inevitably led downward and wondered at the looks in their gem-like eyes, but did not bother to ask as darkness grew while she waited and her task was pressing.

At last she found herself at the bottom of the mountain, just as the moon peered over the hills opposite. This was her element: darkness and shadow. So many years living with the cave-creatures had taught her to read the darkness like other beings read daylight, though she could see no better than anyone else. Her ears perked, her hooves sought the next step before they reached it. The path led through the trees and into a forest that she could not see the end of, but she dared not try to go around it. The half-moon shed silver illumination on her surroundings that aided her somewhat, but was for the most part a curiosity that she ignored. The leaves that crunched beneath her feet made her somewhat nervous as they were a new sound to her, but she grew accustomed to the sound as she carefully followed the path that led away from the mountain. Branches had been recently torn and broken here, and there were imprints of hooves in the dirt and mud that she followed in reverse. At last, just as she was growing weary from the relatively unusual amount of exercise, the flickering, hellish glimmer of fire was seen through the trees. Jemi slowed her approach and ducked away from the light.

There were creatures around the fire. They stood on only two legs, and Jemi wondered that they did not topple; they reminded her of faeries without wings, but they were much less beautiful, almost bordering on repulsive. Their scent was odd to her as well, even to her faint and patchy memory. They talked in a tongue that was foreign and laden with an accent that made Jemi’s ears twitch to make it stop.

There, also, were three silent horses and one speaking mare tied to a post in the shadows opposite her. The fact that they held a speaking beast in bondage at all made Jemi angry—did these creatures know nothing of the sanctity of the speaking beasts? She slowly began making her way over to the mare, taking care not to make a sound. Finally, she was close enough to softly murmur, “My cousin, you are bound?”

The mare twitched her ears and nodded carefully, so as not to alert the silent horses or the strange creatures who probably wouldn’t have noticed anyway.

Jemi, perceiving that the mare could not respond or be found out, whispered, “They do not know of your nature? What think they, then, that you are a mere beast?”
The mare nodded again.

“Shall I free you?” she asked, but the mare shook her head and twitched her left flank. Jemi saw a scar glisten in the firelight and nearly moaned in sorrow and anger. “Oh…” she murmured, “You are slave. I am so sorry. Can I do nothing?”

The mare made as if to bite an irritating area on her flank and whispered, “Flee, lest they defile you or take you prisoner. This is a dark time for my kind. Nothing is sacred.” She then faced the fire again and kicked her hind leg to tell Jemi to do as she said. Jemi made haste to leave, but only with a curse on the heads of the strange creatures and a prayer for blessing upon the captive mare.

Jemi again followed the path left for her by the centaurs that had invaded her prison, not knowing that strangers were following her at a distance, biding their time in both the tentative fear of the creatures that naturally inhabited this land and the greed of those who have stumbled upon unspoiled country. She was swift, and they were not, so they were several days, possibly even a week behind her by the time she came upon the tribe from which the two reckless centaurs had come.

To her they seemed quite lovely. The tribe was slender of build and graceful of motion, though their flaw was in their obviously brittle bones and weak constitutions. She watched them for a time, at last sighting what the tribe’s collective lives revolved around: the care of one unusually sturdy and beautiful mare. They were all very good to her, Jemi had to credit them that, but she highly doubted that the young mare was even slightly aware of the reason for the treatment. Jemi also noted that superstition was heavy in this tribe. The carvings of blessings to ward off evil over every door clued her in. Even Deserae would have found fault with this place.

She stayed hidden for most of that day, and though she stayed well out of sight, she was still seen. She knew it was so because as she watched the curiosity that was the young mare, the mare turned and looked her directly in the eye, and Jemi saw there the innocence of hundreds who had been conceived, born,  and died. Such innocence made Jemi start, and she stumbled backward before quickly making her way to a safe distance, where she could see no one and no one could see her.

There she stayed until the thundering of her heart had ceased its roar and settled into a quiet rhythm. She chanted to herself to keep the quiet rhythm steady and took aim at a tree for target practice until she was no longer thinking hard about the innocence she had seen, then she leaned herself against a tree and dozed off.

When she woke it was night once more and the moon had risen to dance with the clouds in its flirty manner. The night-creatures had woken to scuttle about as she moved around; and owlet was peering out at her from its hiding place in a tree and hooting mournfully. It was a curiosity, as it had it had glowing blue rings around its eyes and face. She watched it for a little while before another curiosity made her frown and made her ears twitch.

There was a scent on the wind, very faint and very foreign, yet somehow familiar. It made her nostrils burn and her heart skip a beat in, what, fear or excitement? She could not tell. She tried to track the scent, but it was weeks away from her current position and she gave up the hunt. To relieve her mind of this scent on the wind, she thought on something else, and began to creep toward the centaur village. Her footsteps were soft, her breathing was measured, and the being stalking her was clumsy and unused to doing so. Jemi heard the crackling of heavy weight on the leafy floor and waited.

The centaur was like a vision as it stumbled into the moonlight. Its coat shone like silver and its face was like that of a god as it lifted itself to the trees. Jemi was stunned. The vision looked over to where she lay in wait, eyes glittering like sapphires with curiosity as their shimmer.

“Why are you hiding?” it asked in a voice that was soft like a mother’s kisses and innocent like a child. It sounded like an angel. Jemi had a hard time speaking.

“I am a stranger here,” she choked out, her voice sounding so crass before a god.

“You fear that we will reject you?” the god asked, turning to face Jemi.

Jemi nodded, vaguely aware that such a motion would not be heard but unable to say more. The god took a step forward, and Jemi stumbled back.

“Don’t go,” the god pleaded softly. “You’re different from them. I wish to understand.”

Jemi’s eyes were wide with confusion and a small amount of terror. She was focusing on her unrighteousness before this creature, which radiated innocence and beauty. She, a murdering mare with no account for her age and no tribe to call her own, was in no way worthy to speak to a god. Surely she would be struck dead. Surely Zeus would see this creature, this holy being, and strike Jemi dead for tainting it.

The god took another step forward with tentative motions and a hand that seemed to drift for what it could not see.

Words left Jemi’s mouth, though she could not account for their origin. “Stay back,” she whispered, and the god froze.

“Why?” it asked. “Are you hurt?”

“I am not worthy,” Jemi replied quietly.

The god looked confused. “Not worthy of what?” it asked.

“I am not worthy of an audience with a god,” Jemi said.

The god giggled. Jemi had never heard an odder or a more joyful sound, but it struck her as strange that a god was giggling.

“I am not a god,” the creature laughed. “No more than you are, and I presume that you are mortal.”

Jemi frowned in confusion. Heat swelled in her gut and caused her back to perspire.

The moonlight, so foreign and lovely, had caused her to see a deity where there was only flesh. She had made a fool of herself. She stood slowly, glad for the shadows
she hid in, for they hid her shame as well.

“Then who are you?” she asked, voicing more strength than she possessed at the moment. She, too, looked like an otherworldly being, with her hair falling in unkempt ringlets around her shoulders and her eyes gleaming like garnets from the shadows. She looked like a demon of tales, and she brought a sense of awe upon the angel-like centaur who spoke to her.

“The tribe calls me Ephim,” the centaur replied, with a strange faintness to her voice that made Jemi cock her head to understand. Ephim watched her carefully, as if to memorize every ebony hair on her head.

“What do you call yourself?” Jemi asked to fill the silence that was blooming around her like a black rose.

Ephim opened her mouth, and closed it again with confusion. “I don’t know. Ephim, I
suppose. I’ve never actually thought of calling myself anything different.” She turned glittering eyes to the shadows that hid Jemi. “What is your name?”

“Jemi,” she replied. Her front hooves stirred beneath her, and she watched Ephim’s ears twitch in the direction of the sound.

“Jemi,” Ephim repeated, trying the word on her lips and finding it bland and commonplace. “It means ‘of the moon’, doesn’t it? You were born in the full moon. Why are you hiding in the woods, Jemi?” she asked, edging forward. Jemi responded by inching back.

“To… to find my bearings,” she said. In truth, she had no idea whatsoever as to why she was hiding from these frail centaurs, many of which had necks that could be easily snapped and gaskins that looked easily broken. For the most part, deep within herself, Jemi was out of place in the ritual and sanity that was centaur life, and she wished to raise a façade to make herself look well-educated and normal so that she would blend into her own tribe. But how does one tell such a thing to a stranger, and a lovely stranger at that?

“You could find your bearings while sleeping in a hut,” said Ephim. “My family could house you.”

Again, Jemi lost her mind for a moment, for she heard herself agreeing to such a thing, and saw the world pushing past as Ephim led her to a large hut in the center of the tribe. Though she made herself scarce as soon as she could, she was forced to meet the elders, who Ephim called her ‘fathers.’ The elders made Jemi excruciatingly nervous. They reminded her of some foggy memory that made her angry and confused. She used the shadows to her advantage, plus her considerable speed over the white centaurs, and made her way back to the forest, farther from the tribe than before and closer to the mountain. She roamed there for about a day before being drawn back, inexplicably, to the white tribe. Ephim welcomed her back and Jemi was compelled to stay for a while. Meanwhile, the strangers who had followed her for several miles lost her trail and headed north around the mountain in search of similar quarry. Luckily, they had not seen the tribe that Jemi stalked, or they surely would have stayed and hunted.

Jemi took up space in the large hut that Ephim lived in, along with several brutishly large males who somehow managed to be muscular and dainty at the same time. They made Jemi laugh.

Jemi ate of the tribe’s stores, grew to know its people by their attitudes, and became something of a fixture at its gatherings. She was always at Ephim’s side. Ephim, meanwhile, puzzled over the things Jemi said when they were alone, and wondered at her strange attraction to the night. When they wandered together at dusk, as was their habit, she would watch Jemi’s ears twitch when there was a shift in the wind, and saw her watch a blue-rimmed owl for a time before it shook itself and headed into its tree. When she asked Jemi had done to it, she vaguely replied that she had asked the owl about its baby.

Ephim often didn’t understand her strange new friend. Jemi had the odd ability to stare into the eyes of another and communicate with it. She said that her mother had given her the trait, but Ephim sometimes wondered otherwise. There was so much about Jemi that she did not know. It seemed that she had seen so much more of the world than Ephim had, and sometimes the shadows that crossed behind her eyes when she remembered what she had seen were enough to frighten the innocent white centaur.

One night, as the two were slowly heading to a rocky ledge that showed a spectacular view of the valley below without being up too high, Jemi pointed out something that made Ephim start.

“They follow us, you know,” she said softly as her ears twitched. “Those prissy bodyguards of yours. They never let you out of their sight.”

Ephim halted and looked around. “They do? How?”

“I’m not sure,” Jemi replied, gesturing to imply that they should keep moving. “You’d think with their coats that they’d stand out like snow, but they don’t. Maybe they were trained?”

“I’ve never heard of anyone training in our tribe,” Ephim stated. “We are not a warring people.”

Jemi looked at her oddly, and Ephim flushed in the darkness. Jemi had let on that she had been trained in the brutal art of war, but Ephim was quite proud of her tribe’s peaceful, ‘diplomatic’ nature. Within herself, Jemi doubted their diplomacy. Centaurs were not prone to choosing conversation and trade over war and slavery. There were usually knives held at throats when one centaur lord wanted to talk peace with another, which led her to wonder who held the blade in this instance, the silly little white-coated tribe, or some other, darker clan with bigger sword and larger muscles was holding Ephim’s tribe by the throat.

“What are you thinking about?” Ephim asked, after Jemi was silent for several minutes.

“I wonder about your tribe, Ephim,” Jemi said quietly, thoughtfully. It might have occurred to her to lie if she wasn’t so out of practice. Being alone in a cave for an untold number of years with only yourself to lie to can do that to a person. “I wonder at the stallions following us, and how they learned such things without training.” She looked at Ephim with head cocked slightly and pointed insolence in her eyes, and added the last part of her wonderings. “I wonder at your innocence.”

“My innocence?” Ephim repeated, slightly irritated and slightly surprised. So the mysterious and quiet Jemi though she was innocent and inexperienced. Ephim should not have cared—wasn’t she lovely and happy without such opinions?—but the words stung her deeply. “I am not so innocent as you think,” she retorted.

“Aren’t you?” Jemi asked gently. “It is your power and your weakness. You shouldn’t deny it.”

“I am no innocent!” Ephim exclaimed and stomped one hoof. Jemi didn’t reply. She looked away and left Ephim to her thoughts.

Her argument deafened by the truth that lay in Jemi’s eyes, Ephim quieted. After a little while she sighed.

“Let’s not fight,” she said. “Why should we waist such a beautiful night?”

Jemi was staring at the valley below her and remembering the task she had set before herself when she had first escaped her prison. It was a dark and awful task that loomed over her head like a dark sky. She would have to leave soon, she realized. She and Ephim stood beside each other with their own thoughts and watched the goings on below them, and Jemi leaned against her friend affectionately.

“We shouldn’t fight. Friends shouldn’t fight.” She sighed, “I wish it would be this way forever.”