Safe

She stumbles through the blackness, hands held in front of her face to shelter herself from the unseen things in the dark. The barn is so quiet, completely quiet, save for faint rustles that let her know she is not alone. The noises remind her of her fear, keep her from collapsing where she stands.

Her outstretched palms hit against smooth, hard wood. Dizzy with hunger, she climbs over what is perhaps the door of a stall, wanders forwards. She has to keep moving. Bad things will happen if she stops moving. Her hands reach an obstacle, some sort of box fastened to a wall- scraping, scraping, her tired fingers find grain lodged into cracks of the container, a whole handful of grain that she hastily stuffs in her mouth, worried even now that someone will take it from her.

She scrunches herself up in the corner of the stall, trying to bury her toes into the safe, comforting muck and hay. Smaller and smaller. Struggling to chew the hard kernels, she spits them into her hands, trying to break them with her dirty fingernails, before losing patience and swallowing them whole. She imagines she is so insignificant that nobody will remember her. Maybe nobody would come to punish her if she didn’t do it- if she stayed here forever in the darkness and dirt, she could eat grain from the box and live here and be happy.

Swish.

Something is there. Right there. She hears it moving now, she was so hungry she didn’t notice before. Her muscles tense, she leaps to her feet, eyes wide in the dark. Cautiously, she stretches her hands forwards. Her fingers catch in thick hair. A hot breath blows in her ear and her hands are gently stroking a horse’s nose. She thinks it is a horse, isn’t sure. It has been so long since she has touched a horse but she does not think she could forget. The thing nickers softly. She really thinks this is a horse. Safety tingles up her spine, across the lashes on her back, through her aching forehead, creeping its way into her bruised heart.

The horse nudges her shoulders until she nearly falls over, then shoves his silky nose against her face, smearing at her tears. She wraps her arms around his neck, crying and crying, all the tears that nobody cares about, that she has to hold back and bury deep inside her. The horse is strong and solid in the darkness, muscled side warm and soft and safe. So safe. Nobody can hurt her here. Still clinging to the horse, she shoves her fingers in the cracks of the box for more grain, swallowing another half handful and giving the rest to the horse, who licks it off her hand with velvety lips. She clutches his mane, almost asleep, so sleepy.

The horse begins to nudge her sleeve, insistent. She pats him and reaches to find whatever he is lipping, maybe grain got stuck to the cloth somehow, but when she reaches for her sleeve, she feels the binding on her wrist, the cold handle of a knife. Remembers the blade and what she has to do.

No. No!

Please.

Go away.

She is not safe, she is not free, she is here to do that thing she does not want to do and go back. There is no sun there. No grain to eat and her horse- who isn’t really hers, but she might as well call him that. Her horse cannot follow her. Nothing happy can, happy is not real there.

It isn’t real anywhere.

She stares at the horse who she cannot see in the dark. The horse nuzzles her head, but she has stopped crying, she can’t cry anymore,

Rasa doesn’t cry.

She shoves him away and scrabbles over the door of the stall, banging her shins, hurting her knees, out of the barn and into the enormous world that is full of blood and shadow and cruelty, where she is nothing and nobody but the knife in her hands and the scars on her back.