the nights were mainly made - jenger pony

[Merrik]

He’s tied the feathers into his mane, manipulating strands of hair that he cannot see until his short white mane is as much black and blue feathers as it is little wisps of foal fluff. They are feathers he’s found (or feathers that Tyrinn had scared off terrified birds), feather’s he’s scavenged for this purpose. He looks foolish, perhaps, but as he prances about with them flapping against his sky blue neck, he is happy.

Happier than he’s been since mother and father disappeared, happier than he’s been since Tyrinn left him beside the lake.

The sabino colt trips – as he often does –and tumbles down a hill. The broad wings that he wraps around his body take most of the brunt of the fall, but it still knocks the wind out of him. He lays, breathless, on his side as the clouds soar overhead. There’s a lion in that one, he sees, and pulls himself up to watch as it floats across the sky. By the time it is out of sight it’s gone from a lion to a tree to a horse with an unnaturally long neck, and Merrick barely resists taking to the air to follow it.

He cannot leave the thicket.

There is danger outside the thicket.

Even as he thinks it, he hears the rumble of their voices. Loud, hungry, the sound of horses with sharpened teeth waiting for little colts with tasty ears to stumble into their traps. He can’t go out there. He must stay here – Tyrinn had said so.

[Illum]

may these words be the first to find your ears
the world is brighter than the sun now that you're here

He does not often leave the familiarity of home, the known of the Desert, and when he does it is never without the company of his twin sister. It is in part due to the fact that she pushes him to be brave and unafraid, and part because he really just likes the comfort of being so near to his small family. But today is different. Today he is tired of the sand and the sun and so much bright sameness. Heartfire is gone, probably off on one of her many adventures finding the places she has only seen through the eyes of others, and he couldn’t find Qatar. So it is all alone that he walks and runs and flies low across the ground, all alone when he finds the blue colt laying in a heap on the ground with his bright eyes glued to a sky as blue as eggshells.

At first he pauses, slows, hesitant until he notices the dark, leathery wings wrapped around the boys ribcage. He’s never met anyone else with wings before, he knows the Desert king has great big wings kind of like that, but only because he’s been told so. It might be nice to have a friend he can fly with, a friend who might maybe also dream of how the wind feels when it funnels beneath his wings.

With one final tilt of his small black head, Illum unfurled his feathered wings and leapt, coasting down to the base of the hill where the blue boy lay. With a thump he landed beside him, only now noticing the feathers woven into the tufts of his mane. Illum wasn’t sure what he thought of that, but he quickly pulled his own feathery wings back and pinned them tight against his small ribcage with a look of childish uncertainty painted across the delicate angles of his face.

“Are those yours?” He asks quietly, his green eyes soft and bright against this other boys face. And then with the furrowing of his small brow, “What’re you doing on the ground?”

Illum

i thiiiink merrik is still laying on the ground? if i misinterpreted just ignore his last question <33