I am not afraid.
The phrase continues to echo in his mind, a constant admission that despite its replication, seems to grow dimmer with each passing moment. He is sure that the wind and the blackness are coming up to meet him - to rip his hooves out from beneath him and drag him into the nothingness, to peel away each part of him that pretends to be more than just a cautious yearling, to reveal the parts of him that he knows are mushy and soft and malleable - broken, weak, small. His eyes are wide, rimmed with white and uncertainty, unable to make out any of the shapes that dance before him beside the swaying of dark tree limbs and crackling leaves.
Whatever certainty in his stance that was shown only moments before as he shouted threats into the howling wind now diminishes, painting his face with soft edges and raw emotion. He’d learn to hide this away better as he grew, though still being just a colt he is unable to mask himself with strength and dignity like he truly wished. Too easy was it for the world to strip away his facade, especially one that somersaults with darkness and howls bitterly against his mahogany and milky-white skin.
Just when Warden is sure that perhaps he had heard nothing at all (only his imagination, like always) and when his guard finally begins to fall, is when a figure plows through the darkness with a reared head. The yearling stumbles backward with long, white limbs, throwing his head up in fright as his eyes roll, a sharp squeal leaving his heaving chest. The monster, however, does not crash into him nor does it attempt to peel away his skin. This monster wasn’t really a monster at all.
She was curious to look at, though in the dark and the groaning wind, any nice face would appear sinister. Gathering his feet beneath him and shuffling them a bit embarrassingly, the colt stretches his neck towards her cautiously. “I thought you were something else,” something dangerous,he admits softly, his brow furrowing in slight confusion as his dark blue eyes gently rove over the nubs of the antlers on her forehead and the graying of her face. Warden’s dark tail flicks at his haunch, bobbing his head slightly as the wind continues to pull through them mercilessly. “This is your forest?”
-- warden
