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Rider knew that soldiers had once sung of gold and glory.
She’d never heard those songs herself, only half remembered verses from elderly and oftentimes drunken veterans of the Levy. The concept was rather novel to her: it seemed insane that the common soldiers would be willing to die for something as base as wealth or honor, though they would always assure her that the preponderance of soldiers' songs were once about such things, that armies bedazzled in decadent heraldry had once sallied out into the field to do battle against one another, singing songs of war accompanied by a variety of trumpets and drums.
Frankly, it sounded absurd, though they always insisted it was true.
Ultimately, she could only trust their word, leaving it among the many other small facts she had learned about the world before the war. These songs of old were filed alongside other half familiar words such as ‘noble’ or ‘city,’ all relics of a world that had been turned upside down and an order that had been destroyed.
The soldiers still sang, but not of wealth or glory.
Their songs lacked the triumphant accompaniment of drums and brass, the bellowed crescendos of gallant knights clad in vibrant blue and shining armor.
Their songs always had a steady tempo, intended only to maintain a consistent beat for the innumerable soldiers of the Levy at march. Their songs were simple, intended to be easily sung by any speaker of the numerous languages present within the structure of the levy.
But most of all, their songs were grim.
With the last decade of ruin, none could be deceived as to the nature of war. The slaughter of the last decade and a half had been more than enough to ensure the constant and active horror of war would be cemented into the generational memory of those unfortunate few who survived long enough to fight. Their enemy was not human and would not make accommodations on the basis of honor or mercy, so neither could they.
Their songs were ones of death and combat, of desperation and violence. They sang of what they did and what they knew.
None sang of victory, for none could know what the future would bring.
She didn’t like to sing, though it was always interesting to listen to the chorused bars of the marching levies: while it perhaps wasn’t the most pleasant singing she’d ever heard, that station of honor was reserved for the faded memory of her parent’s lullabies, it felt… right. She could relate to the grim and grisly topics of the songs, finding a strange sort of comfort in their grim message. It made her feel secure in the collective, safe in her understanding of the world and the War.
She knew that while the other soldiers of the Levy might find solace in the songs, they had failed to understand the messages they carried. They still joked, laughed, and cried. They didn’t understand the simplicity of things, that life could be far easier if one simply embraced its brutality and accepted it into themselves. They sang of slaughter and death and loss but could hardly understand her when she tried to speak of it with them, only offering up looks of concern and the occasional patronizing and demeaning request to ‘talk’ about her ‘issues.’
It was pointless.
So she stopped trying to talk to them and simply listened to them sing.
There was only one person… individual that she felt comfortable talking about her true feelings with. Sharing her songs with.
Horse.
Horse would never judge her for her struggles, never try to pick apart her experiences. Horse would simply listen. She liked to think that the mare understood her words, agreed with them, even. It was hard to imagine that Horse didn’t, given how much they acted in tandem. They were a team, a pair, and that was all that she needed.
Rider related to the songs of the Levy, she enjoyed their steady beat and their memorable lyrics, though they didn’t bring her any peace. They weren’t meant to.
That was a duty reserved for her own songs, her lullabies. Her parents' lullabies.
She first remembered hearing them before Horse.
Her mother or father’s softly murmured words and the warmth of their arms, back when they had a proper home. She didn’t remember much about the house or those times, only the warmth, safety, and the crooned words of loving parents, before her father went off to war.
Before he left, he brought Horse home. The mare was just a foal then, hardly five months old and already being weaned from her mother’s milk. The foal that was later named Horse was weak and sickly: it was only later that she realized that this was likely the only reason that her father had been able to afford Horse, particularly given the expected rough winter ahead. The sickness mattered not to her though: the moment she saw the fledgeling animal, she felt a strange sort of connection form.
She cared so much, doing her best to nurse the foal back to health in all her childlike ways while her father did his best to restore the young mare back to proper health. She refused to leave the young horse’s side, racing back to the mare the moment her daily chores were done. Her father hadn’t let her name it for the first month and a half, saying that it wouldn’t do to get attached to the sickly creature: by the time that Horse was healthy enough for a proper name, it felt wrong to change the moniker.
The moment they met, she had felt a connection between the two of them, one she couldn’t quite describe and hadn’t experienced with any other since. From that moment, they were inseparable: her life was consumed by training Horse, first with her father, then the old veterans once he left for the war.
The times that came after that were hard but she always had Horse. Horse lasted when the others didn’t, Horse survived when others died. So she did the same for Horse. They lived in the moment, lived on through each other.
Rider trusted her with the songs, even though Horse hadn’t been there when they were first sung. They were songs for family… and Horse was the closest thing she had to that.
Even if the memories faded, Horse never would.
She had to believe that.