i'm on the wrong side of heaven, and the righteous side of hell

He doesn’t know why he comes here. The place holds nothing for him, save for bitter memories of a love lost. It was here that he had met Smolder, learned to love her, and then lost her in the same breath. The meadow had been their secret hideaway of sorts, a place where they could forget titles and alliances and all of the bullshit workings of their beloved kingdoms. He could still remember the way her breath had felt against his neck, and the way her skin had tasted between his lips. Sweet like lilac, but with a hint of smoke and ash. But as surely as the moon controls the ebb of the ocean tides, their former lives had caught up to them with a vengeance. He should not have been so stupid to realize that it would happen, but he’d been blinded by something far greater than himself. He’d given in to the illusion of love, only to come up empty handed and with a heart like granite.

But he comes anyways.

He comes into the meadow as quietly as the spring had slipped past winter. Almost unnoticeable, slipping through the trees and the shadows. Other horses grazed and chatted in their cliques, and for a moment he was envious of their easy conversation. But only for a moment. He would have nothing to say to any of them anyways. The black stallion was on a mission of solitude today. Today, he would simply enjoy different scenery, though in truth he missed his home. This place was nice in its own way, but it lacked the dark grandeur of the chamber that he was so accustomed to. It was more spacious and far less dense, the shadows less heavy. But while the snow still clung to the landscape at his home, here it was warm. The grasses were new and green and the trees showed promise of blooms to be. So he would enjoy it, despite the ghosts that peeked at him from behind the trees.

He is lost in his thoughts totally (and they are strange, rambling thoughts). He stays in the shadows on the forest, so he is somewhat startled when he comes upon a mare. Her coloring is the first thing he notices, followed by an impressive set of wings. But those are of little consequence, for she wears the same strained look on her face that he does. Clearly he’s wandered into something private, but he’s here now and sees little chance of a graceful exit. Stopping, he clears his throat, revealing his presence in the least intrusive way he knows how. Manners were something often lost on the old stallion, but he would try. “I seem to be intruding.” he said awkwardly. There were a million things he should probably say, but none of them were coming easily to his tongue. Chatting about the weather seemed to be quite possibly the dumbest thing he could do, so he refrained from that, thinking hard. “I sometimes come here to think too. But not very often. I’m Warship, by the way.” He didn’t ask for her name, and certainly wouldn’t blame her if she left without so much as a backwards glance.

warship

i'm on the wrong side of heaven, and the righteous side of hell

His heart was concrete by now. At one time it had been made of the flesh and blood that makes up other equine hearts, and those had been simpler times. Then the first break (mother) followed by the rest. Perhaps after his mother he’d been left with sandstone- soft still, but with a certain hardness to it. Through the frictions of life and the iron clad grip the world had on him, it had gradually hardened to the mess it was today. Beating only through magic and for a kingdom he’d given his life to.

He’d tried, once, to soften that concrete. That had been a mistake. He wasn’t meant to love or be loved. The creator had built him to be a warrior and nothing more, and that was the visage he retained. Old habits die hard after all. If anyone had been worth laying down his armor for, it had been her. Smolder, his wayward Queen and someone he thought he loved. But love was an illusion for fools and dreamers, and he was nothing if not a skeptic of both.

She shakes her head at his apology, and he offers a small smile in return. Clearly she wasn’t bothered by his awkwardness, and as such he relaxes himself. “Tantalize. A pleasure.” he says in his easy baritone voice, dipping his head slightly. She smells of Amazons, and kingdom he knows little to nothing about. A part of him wonders if Smolder had had an Amazonians strength, if things between them would have been different. Strength, after all, was something he could understand and relate to. But he pushes his rose gray deer from his mind, focusing instead on the winged mare in front of him. “Good question. One I don’t have a good answer to. Boredom? Thinking?” He longs to say reminiscing, but thinks better of it at the last moment. He doesn’t know this mare, and she doesn’t know him, and it seems foolish to spill all of his secrets at once, though a part of him is begging for release. Suddenly she tenses, and he finds himself mirroring her stance. His neck tenses and he listens hard into the forest, all the while breathing deep of the breeze. He hears nor smells nothing out of the ordinary, yet still she remains on guard. “Whats the matter?” he asks, his voice little more than a low growl. Hopefully it wasn’t his luck to run into a wayward woman with a scorned lover tracking after her. But, that would be his luck.

warship

i'm on the wrong side of heaven, and the righteous side of hell

He was drawn to the broken ones like a moth to a flame. It was a pull as strong as the moon on the ocean tides, and he was helpless to stop it. Perhaps because of his own battered self, or something else. He had an uncanny ability to find those needing fixed…but he was no artesian. He was simply a master in the art of faking it. The stallion had never been able to fix himself, let alone someone else. The best he could do was apply mortar to the cracks and hope that the patch would hold. But rebuilding? He’d long since given up on such impossibilities, and had instead learned to live with the imperfections and do what he could. Maybe that was his ability- to find broken, albeit kindred, spirits.

She bristles and he returns her glare, his own eyes narrowing at her as his ears flickered back to his skull. Her tension is palpable, and he’s momentarily surprised that it isn’t visible in the air between him. The soldier in him feeds off of her sudden hostility, and he rolls his jaw in an effort to calm himself. He does not answer her immediately, instead mulling her words over in his mind. He’s not surprised that she seems to have had past transgressions with Gryffen- for as valuable as he was to the Chamber, he was also a vile bastard with no conscience. Warship tolerated him, and valued him as a member of the Chamber, but he couldn’t help but be uneasy with some of his actions. “I serve the Chamber, not Gryffen.” he retorts, his voice a low rumble. This isn’t the first time he’s covered a Chamber mess, and not one that he caused. He takes a step forward, his shoulders still squared but his face softening slightly. “Whatever your issues with Gryffen, know this. They don’t reflect all Chamber members. We’re not all cut from the same cloth. Take that for what its worth.” he said, shrugging slightly. He expected her to turn tail and leave, not believe him, or both. Either way, he wasn’t sure he cared.

warship