10-05-2019, 02:03 PM
Molting makes the colt more anxious than usual, though it is a very small area of his body that is going through the process, only the softer contour feathers that gather along his front legs and the few across his chest. He does not have the full feathering or the wings of some of the other residents of the land. He has seen them, seen more of them, following his mother across Beqanna, and their unusual shapes and behaviors have done little to warm his heart to their ways. He begins to understand why Hippogryph avoids them.
A down feather drifts through the air, black as charred paper floating on the updrafts of a flame. The colt's amber eye follows until he loses sight of it among some crows that have gathered to feast on his latest kill, an unwary groundhog. The creature was large and had fought back, more tenacious than the screaming rabbits he took at first, and there is a bloodied bite on one scaled foreleg to prove it. Ultimately, the weight and talons of the six month old colt had prevailed, and now the rest of the carcass feeds the crows. Quick to catch wind of an easy meal, the flock is rarely far from where-ever the dark mare and her odd colt roam - at least within the common lands. The occasional vulture makes its appearance as well, and, once, a red-brown eagle, who made off with the whole buffet, much to the consternation of the rest of the diners.
No eagles today, however, the crows bicker and hop and bite, glossy black wings shining, almost iridescent, in the bright sunlight. Their feathers are as dark as the mare grazing nearby in a patch of wild morning glories.
"Mama," he hisses to her, plucking the strings of her devotion to him. She should not be eating those, they always make her a bit funny. Funnier, he thinks. His voice is a scratchy, garbled, breath, and the words butchered as he tries to mimic sounds without the lips to make them. "No. Flowers, Mama. Stop," but she doesn't seem to hear him, so pulls his beak from its place within the feathers of his breast, searching for the sore, itching pinfeathers that poke and tweak when he moves. He stands up with a stretch and presses against the mare's ebony side, rubbing against her like a cat and then pausing to preen the round curve of her jawline with a deft touch of that sharp, curved, beak. He lets his breath roll slowly from small nostrils until it becomes almost a purr and Hippogryph stops her grazing to return the favor, yellowed teeth clipping roughly against Dreamscar's greying withers.
She is easily distracted, the crows begin to squabble and set her to staring, her pupils dilated with the toxin of the flowers, and bloodshot from his constant exploitation of his magic. They might be hard for anyone else to look at for very long, but the salt-and-pepper colt has no such difficulties. This is what love does, and he should know, as thick as he's laid it on her. Once upon a time, that might have been argued as a defensive measure, simply what he had done by instinct in order to survive when his mother had been ready to crush him under heavy hooves, but now? Now, he no longer paradoxically needs his potential killer in order to survive, but he has a poor imagination and cannot fathom a life without her well in his taloned grasp.
She loves me too much to want that, anyway, he thinks, casually ignoring that she only loves him at all because he has made her do so. He follows her mostly-vacant gaze back to the clamoring crows. What has set them off?
A down feather drifts through the air, black as charred paper floating on the updrafts of a flame. The colt's amber eye follows until he loses sight of it among some crows that have gathered to feast on his latest kill, an unwary groundhog. The creature was large and had fought back, more tenacious than the screaming rabbits he took at first, and there is a bloodied bite on one scaled foreleg to prove it. Ultimately, the weight and talons of the six month old colt had prevailed, and now the rest of the carcass feeds the crows. Quick to catch wind of an easy meal, the flock is rarely far from where-ever the dark mare and her odd colt roam - at least within the common lands. The occasional vulture makes its appearance as well, and, once, a red-brown eagle, who made off with the whole buffet, much to the consternation of the rest of the diners.
No eagles today, however, the crows bicker and hop and bite, glossy black wings shining, almost iridescent, in the bright sunlight. Their feathers are as dark as the mare grazing nearby in a patch of wild morning glories.
"Mama," he hisses to her, plucking the strings of her devotion to him. She should not be eating those, they always make her a bit funny. Funnier, he thinks. His voice is a scratchy, garbled, breath, and the words butchered as he tries to mimic sounds without the lips to make them. "No. Flowers, Mama. Stop," but she doesn't seem to hear him, so pulls his beak from its place within the feathers of his breast, searching for the sore, itching pinfeathers that poke and tweak when he moves. He stands up with a stretch and presses against the mare's ebony side, rubbing against her like a cat and then pausing to preen the round curve of her jawline with a deft touch of that sharp, curved, beak. He lets his breath roll slowly from small nostrils until it becomes almost a purr and Hippogryph stops her grazing to return the favor, yellowed teeth clipping roughly against Dreamscar's greying withers.
She is easily distracted, the crows begin to squabble and set her to staring, her pupils dilated with the toxin of the flowers, and bloodshot from his constant exploitation of his magic. They might be hard for anyone else to look at for very long, but the salt-and-pepper colt has no such difficulties. This is what love does, and he should know, as thick as he's laid it on her. Once upon a time, that might have been argued as a defensive measure, simply what he had done by instinct in order to survive when his mother had been ready to crush him under heavy hooves, but now? Now, he no longer paradoxically needs his potential killer in order to survive, but he has a poor imagination and cannot fathom a life without her well in his taloned grasp.
She loves me too much to want that, anyway, he thinks, casually ignoring that she only loves him at all because he has made her do so. He follows her mostly-vacant gaze back to the clamoring crows. What has set them off?