03-22-2016, 07:35 PM
Sinew dreams;
Dreams of a tusked beast great in size and menace, and it is hers’ to command.
It is the only time she has ventured forth from the lands of the sunrise to steppes unnamed and found amongst the grass, the strange thing from her dream.
It is newborn, no parent around to claim it so Sinew does, pressing her lips against the birth-wet skin and licking along the length of its strange humpbacked spine. It seems frail in its infant state, mewling and pathetic, and tusked… she is mindful of the minute tusks that sprout from the beast’s cheeks. She thinks it might be a horse, for it bears strong resemblance to her own throwback breed but it is strange too in its appearance and must be a cross between something else. But it is hers’ to claim and she mothers it as best as one like Sinew can.
She claims it, names it, and leads it back home.
Later, she stands in the shadows and sunlight of the meadow - her body half in each as they play over her skin, one chasing the other, and the beast sleeps at her feet. Sometimes, her muzzle drops to the crown of the beast’s head and her breath stirs the long shaggy hairs there that are part mane and part fur - it is a hairy beast after all, the coat thick and long than even hers’ can get in the winter. It stirs beneath her attentions, blinks the sleep from it’s dumb brown eyes but even Sinew cannot miss the beginnings of adoration in its face as it gazes up at her.
“Go play,” she tells it, not expecting it to understand what play is because it is the first and last of its kind.
It climbs to its feet and shambles off, small but hulking for a newborn for it is robust and great in girth for all that it is diminutive in height. Whatever god had a hand in its making did a poor job of cobbling horse and mammoth together, giving it mammoth shape but a small horse’s size and making it look ridiculous to the point that it was ugly - there is no more apt word to describe it than ugly, though it did not know that because Sinew found it and Sinew loved it for its ugliness. It shook its head, baby tusks all agleam from the sunlight as it falls upon them, and lumbered forth, most certainly slow and sluggish and lacking the grace of its sex - female, supposedly.
It saw a gleam in the distance, not unlike the one of sunlight on its tusks and felt happiness burst in its chest like a slick wet fruit smashed open. Could there be others like it? Had Sinew lied to it? No, as it nears the bone-white gleam, it determines that those are strange appendages and most certainly bone and beautiful but not like it, ugly ugly ugly! This was another like it in smallness and newness only, but ever so pretty! Such a pretty thing, it thought even as it said one of the only words it knows - “Bone.” That one word became a mantra, a dry husking chant from its throat as it moved around the filly with the outstretched wings made entirely of bone. It thought it a flightless bird-horse, a shambling-made thing like itself but somehow prettier still because it was neither humpbacked nor fat like it was, or hairy - god, there was so much hair!
It speaks around the tusks that jut out from its hairy cheeks, “Bone.” it says again, and reaches out to lip at one bony wing but a tusk scrapes against it and there is the beautiful rending sound of bone on bone, and Extinct is strangely happy.
Dreams of a tusked beast great in size and menace, and it is hers’ to command.
It is the only time she has ventured forth from the lands of the sunrise to steppes unnamed and found amongst the grass, the strange thing from her dream.
It is newborn, no parent around to claim it so Sinew does, pressing her lips against the birth-wet skin and licking along the length of its strange humpbacked spine. It seems frail in its infant state, mewling and pathetic, and tusked… she is mindful of the minute tusks that sprout from the beast’s cheeks. She thinks it might be a horse, for it bears strong resemblance to her own throwback breed but it is strange too in its appearance and must be a cross between something else. But it is hers’ to claim and she mothers it as best as one like Sinew can.
She claims it, names it, and leads it back home.
Later, she stands in the shadows and sunlight of the meadow - her body half in each as they play over her skin, one chasing the other, and the beast sleeps at her feet. Sometimes, her muzzle drops to the crown of the beast’s head and her breath stirs the long shaggy hairs there that are part mane and part fur - it is a hairy beast after all, the coat thick and long than even hers’ can get in the winter. It stirs beneath her attentions, blinks the sleep from it’s dumb brown eyes but even Sinew cannot miss the beginnings of adoration in its face as it gazes up at her.
“Go play,” she tells it, not expecting it to understand what play is because it is the first and last of its kind.
It climbs to its feet and shambles off, small but hulking for a newborn for it is robust and great in girth for all that it is diminutive in height. Whatever god had a hand in its making did a poor job of cobbling horse and mammoth together, giving it mammoth shape but a small horse’s size and making it look ridiculous to the point that it was ugly - there is no more apt word to describe it than ugly, though it did not know that because Sinew found it and Sinew loved it for its ugliness. It shook its head, baby tusks all agleam from the sunlight as it falls upon them, and lumbered forth, most certainly slow and sluggish and lacking the grace of its sex - female, supposedly.
It saw a gleam in the distance, not unlike the one of sunlight on its tusks and felt happiness burst in its chest like a slick wet fruit smashed open. Could there be others like it? Had Sinew lied to it? No, as it nears the bone-white gleam, it determines that those are strange appendages and most certainly bone and beautiful but not like it, ugly ugly ugly! This was another like it in smallness and newness only, but ever so pretty! Such a pretty thing, it thought even as it said one of the only words it knows - “Bone.” That one word became a mantra, a dry husking chant from its throat as it moved around the filly with the outstretched wings made entirely of bone. It thought it a flightless bird-horse, a shambling-made thing like itself but somehow prettier still because it was neither humpbacked nor fat like it was, or hairy - god, there was so much hair!
It speaks around the tusks that jut out from its hairy cheeks, “Bone.” it says again, and reaches out to lip at one bony wing but a tusk scrapes against it and there is the beautiful rending sound of bone on bone, and Extinct is strangely happy.