Part 1 Chapter 1

Please Note: due to changes in story direction and situations beyond my control there may be accidental references to "Tincture Abbey Stables" residual in this or other texts from this project.  I am in the process of updating everything to Trinity Abbey, so please know that Tincture = Trinity if you come across it.

Part One
A Body Feels As Its Been Through the Wars
Chapter One
Gaelen
He moved through the stone as if there was nothing beneath his feet, tumbling out of control and spinning around in a swirling vortex of emptiness.  The blackness swallowed him whole as it streaked past, the only illumination being from tiny pinhead lights, and the wind rushed around him spinning him around and over on himself.  He saw his precious Demeter grasping to catch him before he was lost to the void.  He cried out with a piercing wail until the last of his breath slid past his lips and he looked up to where he thought Demeter had been, but seeing no one, his heart plummeted to his stomach. The blackness had no form or substance, just silver little streaks of light as he accelerated through the space, there was no sound except the whistling of the wind past his ears.
The desperate decent was deafening as Gaelen fell through the emptiness, the wind whipped and swirled around him as his hair stung slapping against his face, the tears streamed from his eyes.  The whistling of the rush of emptiness past his ears drowned out his thoughts and he could barely breathe from the increasing pressure of the air sucking the essence from his lungs.  The blackness was devoid of anything he could focus on, if he could hold his eyes open.  The vastness and infinity of space he was careening through, flipping and tumbling, was awe inspiring and fear inducing.
Tiny lights streaked through the sky, seeming like rainbows as he peered through his wet vision and the tears streaked across his cheeks.  His ears could hear a drone humming loudly as his blood pressure raised into his head and the beat of his massive heart thudded in his ears.  He closed his eyes tightly again ad thought he could feel his body roll over on itself over and over again, but without anything to focus on, he had no orientation, no idea of up and down, left or right.
Careening out of his control he was losing memory of what was up, down, left, or right.  Faster and faster he fell through the emptiness as the wind screamed past his ears and he forced his eyes closed not because he was afraid of what he saw; he saw nothing but blackness and pinhead lights streaking past, but because the wind hitting his eyes made them sting, dry, and painful. 
His mind swirled around as much as his hair did and he heard voices from his past -- “What have you done?”  “It’s your fault!”  “You can't stay here.”  “You have to leave to save yourself”
The voices came out of his past, but they still were seared deep, branded on his mind.  He couldn’t understand why he had been cast out.  He hadn’t done anything wrong, yet here he was, falling as fast as gravity could pull him, as far as the Fates would sling him, as long as space could carry him. 
His mouth opened as if he were going to try again and call for Demeter, but no sound more than a rough breath escaped.  Nothing could be heard except for the screaming in his mind.  Hair swirled around and flipped about whipping him in the neck, the side, and his face leaving stinging trails behind. 
He saw nothing, and could focus on nothing, and ever present in his mind was how he wished he could stop the screaming in his ears.  It mimicked the screaming he heard from Demeter as the ground opened up beneath him and swallowed him into the vast abyss.  After a while he just let himself fall.
“There is nothing I can do about this,” he consoled himself.  “It is the destiny of the end.”
The screaming turned into a high pitched whistle, his body gyrated and spun out of control and he just kept his eyes closed and waited while trying to silence the squealing that was becoming so high pitched it was making his bones rattle.  He was certain he had reached terminal velocity.  He was certain all that was left was to surrender himself.
Almost as suddenly as it started the wind stopped.  He landed on the ground with a hard and unceremonious thud.  His body burned and stung from the wind accosting him and his hair doing its best to slice through his skin.  He laid there on his side, sore, abused, and weak.  There was no sound anymore, or maybe he was deaf from the experience.  Slowly he inhaled a breath.  It was weak, shuddery, and painful, but it was breath.  He felt like he hadn't taken a breath in days and when he stretched his lungs is was agonizing and he coughed and the dirt next to his face sputtered away and streaked under the force.  There was not a single noise to be heard, but his eardrums still throbbed from the incessant invasion.  His head still rang like a bell, but the silence was absolutely deafening; there was no feeling except the weight of his large body pressing against the ground.  He refused to open his eyes.  It had to be a night mare.
The world settled in all around him as the fine dust slowly drifted to the ground around his lumped body.
“Am I still alive?  How am I still alive?” he muttered under his breath as his voice groaned. 
He peeled his eyes open as he lifted his head and could see through the night a glade of trees and nothing nor anyone beyond.  In his mind he could see the hallowed halls of the stable, hear the proud footsteps of his friends and the others, the laughter, the smells of feed, hay, wood, and stone.  The glow of the fires, the cool of the walls, the sound of the crunch of the ground beneath his feet all were burned deep in his mind.  He wondered if these would be the last thoughts he would ever experience.
If he just stayed where he was, perfectly still, maybe it would all be normal when he opened his eyes in the morning.  Maybe it was all a really bad dream.  He rolled over onto his chest, rested his chin to the cool ground, kept his eyes closed and eventually in the blackness, in the stillness, and in the silence he tried to fall asleep.
The air turned cool, and his skin twitched and shivered instinctively, but his breathing was slow and methodical.  His eyes stayed closed, and he breathed in and out - meditating.
In and out he breathed. 
In and out.  No scents invaded his nose.  In and out.  No sounds invaded his ears.  In and out.  Just a light coolness on his skin as the world slept silently alongside him.  In and out as he tried hard to break the cycle of the dream.  In and out.  In and out.  No sleep would grace him.  His mind was still reeling.  In and out.  Nothing kept him awake, but he could not find peace.  In and out.  In and out.  “Forget it!” he grumped to himself.  “If I can’t find sleep, then I will find where I am.”  Slowly his massive weight hoisted itself up on his legs.  He shook his body rattling the fur, mane, and tail all the way down from his nose to his hooves.  Shaky he stood for a moment re-orienting to what was up, down, left and right.
The dewdrops clung with a stranglehold to every bit of grass struggling to keep from falling and being absorbed by the earth as the blades bent under the weight trying to drop their burden.  A slow, rhythmic, and metronomic crunch could be heard as footsteps crossed over the beaten path.  The dew was swept up into the fur as it flung forward with each plodding step, slapping over and over across the hooves as his feet swung forward in perfect time.  The cool air pressed a heavy fog down over the grounds so it was very difficult to see anything.  Nothing else moved in the stillness.  The light had only begun to creep over the horizon and streak its first vermillion touches to the bottoms of the clouds in a still midnight blue sky that was veiled by a heavy grey wetness all around.  Gaelen paused a moment.  He strained his ear to listen.  Not a bird, not a cricket, nothing was to be heard.  The stillness and silence was painful.  “Where am I?” Gaelen thought to himself.  “How do I get home?”
Slowly his senses came to life again.
The questions seared into his mind as he lifted his large head and sniffed a few times into the moist cool air.  “Nothing smells right.”  He swung his head from his long muscular neck to the side and tried to see anything he could to point him in the right direction.  “Nothing looks right.”  The thoughts began to spin wildly out of control.  “What if I never make it back home again?”  His massive lungs drew in a large breath and then he snorted almost sneezing the air out with a pain in his left side.  He twist around slightly and looked at his side, nipped at it, then turned his head back to the front again.  Gaelen lifted his left back leg and it twanged slightly as he lumbered forward driving with his huge hind quarters and his rippling shoulders.  Every few steps he sniffed the ground, sniffed the air, and walked forward some more.  “Something has to point me back home.”  He ignored the pain in his leg and side as he kept urging himself forward.  “I don’t know where I am, but I know I am not home yet.”
The grass smelled of summer.  The leaves on the trees softly rustled upon the breeze as the wind caressed them lightly.  An owl whistled low from its roost.  He struggled up to his feet, and took a step and realized his leg was really injured.  He could walk on it, but the pain was shooting through from the heel up into the hip on the left side.  It made him drag his toes slightly across the ground, but the dew allowed him to slide effortlessly across the grass.  He lowered down to the grass and breathed deeper than he had tried yet, taking in all the scents.  In the night he could make out some large patches of strongly scented blossoms.  The trees surrounded in a near perfect circle making a natural glade and protection from the weather in the right conditions.  He made his way to the edge of the trees with a shuffle through the tall grass that parted in response to his intrusion.
When he reached the tree line he found they were thick, impassible.  He couldn't wedge his head much less a shoulder between them.  He looked high up to the sky and they reached beyond, the limbs and branches connecting the stars in their webbed network.
“This would probably be the best place to sleep for the night,” his mind’s voice was speaking in hushed tones because he was tired and weary.  He laid down and the grass lush under his body.  He laid his head down and stretched slightly through the pain and groaned under his shallow breathing.
The moon drifted slowly through the sky as his breathing shallow and slow kept perfect rhythm.  The music between the leaves rustling, his breathing, the owls and the sleepy way the grass swished under the twinkling stars.  The perfume from the blossoms wafted as the breeze swirled through the small glade eased Gaelen in a way he couldn’t understand.  Instead of worrying about it, he allowed himself to fall asleep.