a dark mythos; wyrm

[sinew]

Long ago, he came to her in the field.

Then he came for her in the forest.

She followed him from forest to wasteland where he rose up from the unranked masses to become a king. Gave him twin sons and now can feel another fester in her womb, and it had been she that came for him - asked him to give her another because they made such pretty nightmarish things. It is this sensation of fetal plantation and growth that stirs in her a need to break away from the choking dust and dimness of Pangea.

Sinew goes back to where it started, not back to the very beginning just back to the forest.

Something about the tall tall trees and the dark greenness that beckons to her, so vast in its differences from the barren cliffs of Pangea. Maybe it is the forest’s fecundity that calls to her - to her own fecundity, to the point that she feels rich and earthy like the very ground she walks on. She comes upon a curious fork in the path between the trees; a fainter trail used not by them - horses, but more likely predators who leave less of a trace than the bigger bulkier animals do.

The chestnut overo mare looks at each branch in the trail - one is more plainly laid and heavily used, but the other is not and the mark of it is faint and growing over with grass. Instinctively she takes the lesser traveled trail, the route of which leads her further from their own places of ingress and towards those places that are more shadowy, even predatory in their look. She comes across the remains of an elk on the trail, most of the meat having been stripped away and little remains of the fur. Just a branching beautiful rack of antlers and bones that pale and mossed over.

Her black eyes focus on the femur bone; it is the only one picked perfectly clean and not yet showing the subtle creeping of moss and forest that reaches forth to claim the skeleton for its own. She seems like she could be caught easily unaware, but her ears are on a constant swivel for changes in the forest’s noise. Femur, she thinks, that is a good strong name for the foal forming inside her.

[Wyrm]

:WYRM:

Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the lamb make thee?

Yes, a femur is strong. But is it steel? Is it flame or stone or sheer will? Those things, Wyrm thinks, are words that imbue strength. A bone … that is only as strong as the youth it bears and the muscle that supports it. It cannot function without the other workings of the body, therefore, it is not independently something he would consider as a name for a foal. But he is not a mother, nor is he a mind reader. He is simply Wyrm, camouflaged and curled high above the cinnamon mare while she peers longingly down at the overgrowth and the carcass beneath. What was she doing here? If the smell alone wasn’t enough to deter a normal horse from taking this path, then there must be ulterior motives at hand. Either that or this particular woman had reason to ignore fear and instinct.

Curious.

Curious enough to drive him from the sheltering confines of the crown and descend to where she loiters above the waste of some fallen creature. If she is here, then there wouldn’t be a reason to show restraint with his power, so he doesn’t. At first, he’s likened himself to some slender sort of housecat, though his paws are larger with the addition of a sixth toe on his forefeet. His skin, sleek and nearly hairless, is patterned to match the surroundings - white with splashes of shadow and a swirl of brown here and there. As for a tail, there is none; his head is broad with mismatched parts that seem to make no sense. A muddling of something entirely new. With each step towards her though he takes new shape, rises upwards and fills out to become the emerald green stallion he’s always been, leaving only a trace of leonine in his gaze with slitted pupils.

“This isn’t exactly the place for an evening stroll,” He purrs, stopping near the soft earth where the skull has sunk beneath lichen and snow, “but you know that.” Obviously. His eyes blaze trails across her otherwise innocent face, blinking slowly, one after the other, when they’ve had their fill. “Though I will admit it’s nice to see a fresh face in my part of these woods.”

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