 He is changed. He awakes with a terrible taste in his mouth and an ache in his head, as if he’d been asleep for many days, dreaming of other worlds - of other states of being. He is changed, but he does not know how. For a time he lies very still, blinking into the darkness of his forest cave. Since their arrival into the lands of Beqanna, this cave had become home to him and his companion, but now, as he lies strewn across the wet stone, the place feels foreign - strange. He does not notice immediately how the aches in his joints that he has become so accustomed to are no longer there. He does not notice how the rattle in his chest that has plagued him the last few years has relented into the steady rise and fall of healthy breath. “Balto?” he calls hoarsely, his voice grating against the dryness of his throat. And then suddenly he remembers those last moments before he collapsed upon the stone floor. A flash of light - of magic. Now he raises his ghastly head to examine himself, gingerly testing his legs, and upon finding them to be without pain, he slowly rises. “Balto?!” he calls more frantically, but there is no reply. How long has he slept? He searches the cave for any sign of the passage of time, but the underground is slow to age - it does not show seasons or months like the world above. It takes milenia for caves to change, for their teeth to grow, for their rivers to carve out deeper channels and chasms. No, it is not the cave that has changed. Faulkor creeps out from the depths of that earthen hole. Cool moonlight greets him. The fact that it is nighttime brings the star-strewn beast an inkling of peace. There is no danger in the night for creatures like Balto and him. Faulkor decides that he will not worry over his companion’s absence unless the sun rises without him. He is hungry, he realizes as he picks up the scent of carrion upon a whisper of a breeze. Strange - not so the scent of death, but the growling of his stomach in reply. He peels away from his home and into the ancient woodland, seeking the opportunity to sate this peculiar craving. But, he finds her instead. She glows radiant in the starlight, and Faulkor stops dead in his tracks - not for her beauty, though she certainly is - but for a startling memory of a former love. She had been pale like this stranger, although perhaps less refined in her beauty. Faulkor is dumbfounded, standing stupidly with his jaws agape. “I am sorry, nightwalker, to have disturbed your peace.” She speaks, melodic and kind through the trees. “I am S,” How the “S” drags out like a finger over the ancient pages of an old story. “Sider.” he interrupts, and the rest of her name falls upon deaf ears. “My love.” he proclaims, and if it were possible tears would have welled up in those hollow eyes he wears. |
@[Saedìs] - Sorry for the wait, and this is going to be weird. Faulkor's old lead mare was white and her name was Sider. He may or may not snap out of it.