 It's the start of the ending of winter when Picard finally makes his way to the river. A thick blanket of snow still covers the ground and the trees branches glisten with ice from one of the last storms of the season. All around him the birds that remain tweet quietly as they settle in their nests and a lone doe makes her way quietly through the trees.
Taking slow steps, Picard makes his way carefully through the snow covered paths towards the sound of rushing water. His gold and white butterfly wings opening and closing slightly as he steps through the trees. So far this was one of his most favorite places he had decided to investigate. The landscape was fascinating despite the freezing cold and the way the snow stuck in clumps to the hair on his legs and in his tail.
His eyes slowly traced across the landscape that spread out around him and when he finally comes to the river he releases a long breath before taking a few more steps even closer to the dark waters. White caps burst along the surface of the river and the waves crashed along it's banks as the threat of another storm builds in the distance.
The cold air burns in his chest as he watches the rivers raging waters. After a while he glances up only to make eye contact with the doe who had somehow made her way across the river. For a moment they watch one another and then the sound of a tree crashing in the distance shatters the moment. With it the doe turns sharply and hops into the trees leaving him alone once again. "Man," he whispers softly in disappointment.
09-10-2021, 01:15 AM
(This post was last modified: 09-10-2021, 05:43 PM by Etojo.)
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Etojo had spent the day in the shallows, trawling over mud, sticks and pebbles, where the icy water didn't surge so fierce. Below he watched on as little river fish pooled at his ankles, too small to be worth the snack, not that he could snatch them anyway, he'd tried. He was too slow, perhaps even too old. His stomach gurgled with the familiar twisting pang. Winter especially never fed his hunger well. Etojo wretched his orange gaze away from them and sloshed on, looking instead between the jagged rocks and fallen branches where things no longer alive sometimes got stuck.
Somewhere upstream a tree uprooted. The reverberating sound sending a swirl of feathers skyward and a skittish doe loped past him on the snowy bank above, vanishing deep into the trees. None of these things bothered him, except…
It was the wings he saw first, bloody things, fluttering irritatingly in the dappled light. His jaw tightened instinctively, teeth ground down on teeth, his lip twisting into an almost snarl. Bloody wings! He'd seen enough of them to last a lifetime. This was his river. Well, he liked to think his part of it at least. And he wouldn't have those who wore them here.
Etojo was a terrible hunter but he was good enough at tearing things. He had plenty of practice ripping into bloated corpses, prying away old toughened flesh from cartilage and bone, it's how he survived. He'd tear those damn wings off that boy, tear them off and… he'd think about that later. First things first.
Etojo surged at him from the water. The little fish which followed his hoof-falls darting away into pockets of rock. He surged up the bank and into the snow, a whirlwind of dead shrivelled leaves and dried up sticks, all damp fury and chaos. "You!" He snarled, still a way off, his voice perhaps half indistinguishable with his very real need to suck in air at the same time. "Come here."
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@ Picard
There was nothing that could have prepared him for what was to come once the doe disappeared. Soon after the silence had spread following the crashing of the tree the colt found himself turning towards the sound of pounding hoofbeats. He watches in both shock and awe as the creature makes its way towards him. ’A tree?,’ he wonders. For a moment his mind can’t process what he’s seeing.
It’s only when the other is strides away that his wings begin to flutter. The creature yells at him and the young colts heart jumps in his chest as he lifts off the ground. Though instead of fluttering away he heads directly for autumn entity. Within seconds the golden spotted butterfly closes the distance between them.
It doesn’t take long for him to spot the other’s differences. His legs dangle in the air as he hangs over the other, eyes wide with both shock and curiosity. He studies the way the others body is covered in leaves and how the twigs grow from his mane.
”You’re pretty angry for a tree,” Picard says. His wings flutter a bit faster and his heart pounds deep within his chest as he hovers just out of the others reach. ”What did I do to you?”
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Once, a very long time ago Etojo would have shown more restraint. But the deepest parts of the forest had changed him wild. The change ran deeper than flesh, it was all of him, flesh and mind. He'd become a beast with little more than basic thought, he acted on instinct, black or white. There was no grey, no reasoning, no commonsense - some would say he'd lacked that anyway, but it was much simpler now, rended basic.
And so this reckless, headlong charge of his had one purpose. Get the boy, get his wings. The icy breeze licked his face, chest and sides as he cut through the snow, Get the boy, get his wings… little chunks of ice swirling from the cut of his hooves in his wake. Get the boy, get his wings… the boy turned towards, Etojo could read the surprise in his eyes and he barrelled closer still.
He was almost there, his mouth opening in anticipation, his lips peeled back in a glorious open snarl flashing yellowed fangs. Except the boy fluttered up. Suddenly and unexpectedly. The boy fluttered up, and the space that was between them switched from horizontal to vertical and instinctively, without thought for the futility of it, Etojo launched himself upright from his haunches, snapping at the air only to feel the jolt of his own teeth as his mouth clamped shut over nothing. The boy’s hooves dangling tantalising close just out of reach as he flitted to and fro above his head.
"You look pretty angry for a tree."
His orange eyes flashed with an impossibly dark anger. The taunt cutting deep. He knew what he was, could see his hideous face reflected in the water whenever he scoured the river's edge for a dead and rotting meal. He did not need to be told nor reminded. "Get down." He growled, loud enough so as the raging water could not drown out his ugly rasp of a voice. "Now."
It was not that the boy had done anything wrong per se, but rather the fact he existed as he did, winged and flaunting of it. The golden parts of the boys wings glistening as they caught the winter sun, almost as if they were taunting him. Who knew what other abominationable abilities lurked beneath that golden speckled hide. Dangerous. Unpredictable. A threat. That's what the boy was. And it was rather ironic that it did not seem to matter that he himself had become exactly what he dispised.
"Everything." He muttered faintly, more to himself than the boy. The boy's wings casting moments of shadow across his brow. The boy's wings… there was an old memory of someone else's wings, a memory strong enough which made him think unnaturally deeper. And Etojo had the sudden thought of where there was one, there were many. He wasn't fond of the idea of it, conversing with the enemy. Nor was he certain he even had the words now, much time had past.
"Come down." He demanded again, softer, still unfriendly, but less of a threat. "We talk."
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@ Picard
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