[open] down for getting dark

[Isak]

His father had been winter, deep and dark. That’s what his mother told him, her warm breath against his neck. She whispered secrets to him no one else would ever know. 

About the jungle they lived in, about eternity and betrayal. Her voice muddles in his brain now and he hardly remembers the true version. She told him so many things -- sorting lies from the truth nearly impossible. He thinks about her on lonely nights. Now, she is far away from him, tucked away in her jungle impossibly out of reach. 


He is detached from life he lived on the islands, brought to this new place by chance. A child born from two very different worlds. His father deep and mysterious, his mother bright and flighty. Isak grew up in the jungle and thought there would never be another place like it, his heart bled for the place he was born in. Here in these new surroundings he is left with a hollow feeling in his chest, it slithers between each of his ribs until a dull pain radiates throughout his entire body. 


The Beqanna winter is harsh, freezing the very marrow in his bones. Isak never experienced such a season in all his life and his body never learned how to accommodate the blistering cold. His coat is still unbearably thin, sleek like summertime. 

With a sigh, the bay stallion shuffles through the snow. His knees barely bending as he carries his sluggish body across the vast meadow, or what he believed to be a meadow. It was hard to decipher exactly what this place was when the winter cold wasn’t dominating every feature. He lowers his muzzle to the ground, sniffing at the white powder, trying to find even the merest mouthful of something to eat.

[Ea]

now you're staring at a queen.

If horses were seasons, she too would be winter: beautiful, cold, detached. Her mother would have been summer -- fiery, overbearing -- and her father spring.

Despite her twelve years alive in Beqanna, she still had not grown accustomed to its winters. Ea had also been born and raised in a jungle, air permanently warm and sticky, and she’d had quite a culture shock when she moved on to the Dale, with its true four seasons.
A shiver runs through her despite her thick winter coat.
Even though Beqanna had now destroyed its former kingdoms, its oldest lands  -- the field, the meadow -- remained untouched. It had been a long time since she’d made her way to the field -- probably not since she had followed her mother here, once as a young child, to learn about recruiting. It was unlike her to seek out others for conversation; perhaps not the best trait in a queen.

“Hello,” she says, coming across a young plain boy, shivering and looking for something to eat. “I’m Ea,” she pauses, waiting for him to introduce himself. “My home is a little warmer than it is here, though it’s a bit of a swim. Is that what you’re here for, to find a home?”
She looks at him, quietly, questioningly.

[Isak]

His lungs burn from the cold and he coughs. Never before had he experienced snow or the frigid cruelness of the land, his jungles were warm and forgiving. After he left, Isak was not sure there were any other places like the one he’d grown up in and has decided the rest of the world must be bitter and frozen. A wasteland meant for hardier folk, it’s not meant for little boys who never learned how to grow up. He would prefer to have stayed with his mother forever, beneath her ever watchful eyes and never know the outside world. His father had been a shadow that slipped in and out of her life, he changed everything for the warrior queen -- he made her soft and she bowed under the weight of motherhood.

Isak made her weak and because of that, he left. It was his own decision, or maybe it was the decision of the other mares who needed their queen to fight their battles. He slipped away in the night, in the darkness he ran far and fast until no one could remember his name. Isak would never be anyone’s weakness again.

There is something about the snow that is blinding, it makes his dark eyes squint. He is a dark mass against the whiteness. He feels hunger claw at his belly. This was nothing like home and it makes his heart wilt inside his chest, there is something hopeless about the snow. Isak hears her footsteps before he hears her voice, his head lifts partially, an ear flicks -- he’s not worried, if anything he’s comforted. He was used to mares, they were the only family he’d never known.

Her voice presses against him, warm and eager. The bay stallion takes in a deep breath and exhales somberly. “Isak,” he says softly to her and his nose extends in a passive greeting. There is something both excited and miserable that swells up inside him.

When Ea tells him about her home, he lifts his blocky head. Something akin to familiarity twinkles in his dark eyes and he gives her the slightest smile. “I lived on an island all my life,” he tells her, “in the jungle and swimming was my favorite sport among the mares.”

Isak thinks back on his childhood fondly and aches to remember that he cannot ever return. He is a weakness, he is something that would only bring suffering to those he loved. With a quiet shuffle he lowers his head back down to the snow drift, lipping at the icy snow.