"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
The Forest has become second nature to her; she knows it about as well as she knows herself. Here, she is free to come and go as she pleases and answers to nothing but the wind and the old old trees. Keeper is happiest here, traipsing up and down the trails less traveled because horses are creatures of habit and herd, and horses do not go where the deer go but Keeper does. She follows after them but they always run from her, just leaps and bounds ahead of her bumbling pony-sized self that lacks their same self-assured and inborn grace. That’s fine with her though, she is no doe with big liquid eyes but Keeper whose mane and tail are full of sticks and burrs, whose fur is growing woollier by the day.
It is cold, but that is to be expected.
She can smell snow not far off on the air as the autumn deepens. It leans terribly towards that time of frozen rivers and broad drifts of snow, and the shimmer of icicles hanging from the boughs of naked shivering trees. Keeper has no idea if it is shaping up to a mild or harsh winter, gives it no thought really as she roots through the leaves that have fallen to the ground. The last time she did this she almost snorted a few pellets of mice feces up her nostrils and that was a rather unpleasant experience, so she’s not quite sure why she is down digging through the dirt and the leaves once again. Except that she has a fondness (or a weakness) for mushrooms, and when she’s this deep in the woods, she looks for them.
But a flash of black and white goes by her and makes her throw her head up sharp. Her black gaze narrows in on the shape and at first, it looks like it could be him but she doesn’t smell lakewater and moonlight and there is too much white to be the constellations that pepper his nighttime skin. But for just a moment, there is hope. So much hope that it hurts her heart and Keeper has to remind herself to breathe. It had looked so much like him but the beast that had gone by was just another stallion, not him - never him, but she is curious nonetheless and moves after him. He seems lost in thought or perhaps focused, she’s never been able to discern much between the two.
The resemblance as she nears him is rather uncanny but a tobiano is not a sabino, there are distinct differences after all and he looks nothing like her Argo. Still, she gives him a wry smile that is not altogether unkind or sad just not like her usual chipper and odd self. She had hoped it would be him after all. The disappointment lingers with her that much longer and leaves her… not quite herself - not quite Keeper of the easy and loving smiles, even as her nose drifts close to his own and she inhales his scent just to confirm what her eyes have already seen, it’s just not him. Keeper huffs out a little bit of her disappointment in a sort of sighing snort.
She almost thought about going back to her mushroom hunt but abandons that idea.
He seems a bit forlorn in a way that she cannot quite pinpoint but only guesses at, then again he could not be that forlorn at all but rather deceptive in his quiet stance. Keeper cocks her head to the side, never taking her eyes off him since he’s a curious fellow after all.
He wonders if any of them truly do, when they come to wander the social grounds. They are here to socialize—obviously, Malekith, very observant of you—but is there any goal to it? Is there anything to gain from empty socializations and bland interactions? His own interactions here in this newer common ground have been far from bland (Starlin had been just the right company, exactly what he needed after years of silence), but to what end? In the end, they talk, they move on, they forget one another. It's how things go and how they've always been. After all, there isn't a single horse who would remember him as the once-prince of the Chamber.
The Chamber doesn't even exist anymore... he needs to let go.
Winter is swiftly approaching, and the painted stallion has already developed a thick coat that protects him from the nights that are already approaching frigid temperatures. He is here today, deep within the woods, for no reason other than to just wander. The air is colder than it's been in days, but he enjoys it all the same; the love for cold weather is in his blood, after all. Tatter had loved it before him—why else would he rule such a cold, unforgiving kingdom?
He is unaware of the dark eyed woman that follows him silently, too lost in his own troubled thoughts to realize he has a follower. He hadn't known his family well at all, he is coming to realize. Sure, his parents were monarchs once upon a time and he had a twin sister named Lyanna—but what of them? He remembers their faces, but their voices are a distant memory that is harder and harder to grasp each day. They had never been close; some days Tatter would be at Frost's throat, and their arguments would shake the Chamber. They had loved each other, but that hadn't kept their family close.
Eventually he stops and glances behind him, if nothing else but to see if there is anyone else this deep into the forest. His eyes fall on the mare that has been following him, and the smile on her face is one of slight disappointment, as if she had expected him to be someone else. He smiles sadly as she sighs lightly, his yellow eyes watching her carefully.
"I'm not who you thought I would be, right?" he asks after a few silent minutes, moving to breathe in her scent. "You thought I was someone else." He supposes that is what comes of living life in total solitude—there's always going to be another who looks like you, but you're not going to be the one they expect to find. It makes him feel a bit lonely, but what else should he expect?
"Regardless of who you thought I am, I'm Malekith," he says, two-toned tail flicking over his hocks. The question is now, who is she?
Keeper is at a loss;
The deer are gone. Only for the winter, as she knows they’ll return after the snow melts.
Argo is gone. Where to, what for, and why? Are the questions that plague her, but then the two of them have never been around one another long enough to pose a question of forever, only right now. Each small moment with him is kept closer to her heart than a secret, and Keeper loved secrets as much as she loved mushrooms and moonlight and everything else that one like her is capable of loving which is a lot, apparently.
She realizes that he hadn’t known she was there, tailing him through the trees. Nor had Keeper realized that he had been lost in thought as much as she’d been lost in whatever whims she was keen on indulging that night in the woods. Mushroom hunting, dreaming, running headlong down treacherous paths but none that were too treacherous to her because she knew a fair amount of them which meant that she spent as much time here as she did in the field or in Hyaline.
The smile he gives her is sad as he stops at last and notices her. Too late! Keeper is struck by the sudden horror that he has caught her disappointment that he is not the him she has been looking for and her emotions had run amuck all over her face. He moves to breathe her in and asks her a question; her face falls instantly apologetic as her black eyes take a downward cast in pure embarrassment as she answers him. “No, you’re not him.”
It is a painful hushed admittance because for all that she likes to hold secrets close to her, she does not like to share them and the one she mistook him had fast become a secret she kept closer than most and to admit that he was not him… it took something out of her, a little air, and added in just a bit more sadness than Keeper was comfortable with. She has no right, she thinks, to feel the way that she does about someone that she barely knows but her brain argues with her heart and says she has as much right as any other - some things are just instantaneous, like her connection to the one she mistook him for.
“I’m sorry…” she begins, sensing a bit more of his own melancholy. Had he for a moment, thought to have been someone she sought? Hope is cruel, she realizes and both of them had felt it in those first moments together. It makes her move closer to him, daring to bring her nose to his cheek for a brief swipe of camaraderie. Her mouth turns up a smile, just for him, as she moves back a pace to give him room after her sudden touch as he introduces himself to her. “Malekith.” she turns his name over and over in her mouth like a pebble, working the taste of it deep into her mind and memory.
Behind him, his bicolored tail flicks over haunches that are nicely muscled and Keeper’s own snarly tail is still against her hindlegs. It has grown quiet again as she looks at him, memorizes the features of his face against the backdrop of trees before she decides to introduce herself. Making the introduction was not a hard decision, it was rather necessary given that he’d shared his name with her so easily despite knowing he wasn’t who she had first thought him to be before she knew the scent and shape of him was all wrong. Bless the shadows, they’d lent him enough disguise to make her heart leap and her legs chase after him! She gives the tiniest shake of her head and another smile, this one more like how Keeper’s smiles always are - friendly.
“I’m Keeper and I’m truly sorry I thought you were someone else but maybe that is for the best, yes?” If anything, she can find the good in the situation and the good is that she is standing here, meeting him - Malekith.
