Is this some kind of fucking joke? Some dude comes around and promises to -what?- take back the land, and this is what they get? Nothing more than a dried up piece of earth, a wasteland, a place even worse than the Desert (at least deserts have oases). The only positive element is that it isn’t humid and hot. Belgarath is practically made of ice; he doesn’t do well in the heat. He starts sweating like a whore in church, and oh lawdy, it gets awfully hard to breathe. It’s enough to make all several hundred pounds of him quite miserable.
Ah, but there’s nowhere else to go, now is there?
To the south, the common lands hold food and the threat of company, which the dappled stallion has no longing for (Is it fear of retribution for his past sins? Or just curmudgeonly asshole syndrome?). The north is besieged by obnoxiously feminist women and the west is death by salt water. Which just leaves whatever is to the east, over a mountain range. When he has his powers, Belgarath fears no one – not death, not a band of marauding stallions, and not the icy tip of unknown peaks. Without them… the itch to explore and the necessity of holding back is driving him bonkers.
Belgarath stands at the base of the eastern mountains with a frown on his devilishly handsome face (whether or not he is devilishly handsome is in the eye of the beholder, but he will always think of himself as such). His gray-dappled coat is far more brown than gray now, coated by the dry dust that invades every corner of this wasteland. His thoughts linger not on the why or how of land rearranging, but what is beyond what they now, and why does everyone feel the need to ask Beqanna’s permission to have a new home? Why couldn’t he, lazy as he is, if he went over those mountains, be the first to find it and claim it for his own? Are not the ladies fools for kings and entrepreneurs? And does Bel not live mostly in his baser instincts?
Behind those ice-blue eyes lay a screaming Id and a powerful wave of testosterone. All he needs is his Ice.
belgarath 
It's been three weeks since she lost Surgery.
She doesn't care - not really. He was (like all her children) a temporary whimsy. Perhaps she'll love this one. She had such high hopes for them, especially after Covet. But Covet had to be dropped in the adoption den and then bartered from kingdom to kingdom before he rose to anything more than a stuttering fool. Harmonia loved him only then, as a king and a leader. She came from the shadows with her promises, putting the seeds of war into his ear. Ah, such sweet memories of her long dead son. Rotting on the beach with those whores he loved. If rolling her eyes made her look more annoyed than fearful she would.
Surgery's scent left the wasteland and kept on on on to god knows where. Harmonia didn't care. Without her magic to manipulate him to her whim she was rather bored by him. He was aging now (they're better when kept as perpetual children for decades) and without her ability to magically lure children to her whim well.
Well.
The wasteland would do, though. Until she got her magic back, somehow.
She is annoyed mostly by the world. She's long since dropped her impassive idiot act. It only suited her when she was magical, when she had something to defend herself. Now that she is useless (nothing is more useless than a 14hh and some change mare without an ounce of muscle on her body, lithe as a dancer and less coordinated) she fears appearing weak. Instead, she is Napoleon, guns blazing and eyes hot.
"Don't stare too long, you'll ruin your eyesight," she tells the ice beast in front of her. Without her magic she is clumsy, no doubt he sees and smells her coming. HARMONIA the pied piper
Even without his well-earned gifts, no one has ever taken Belgarath to be ‘weak.’ Small-minded, arrogant, a bully, mean, bastard, idiot, asshole, and mother-fucker are just a few of the names he’s been called. But the tongues of women and their protectors draw little blood from the dappled stallion. And in the end, he usually wins anyway, whether it’s through fear and intimidation (my, how that demon ice comes in handy), or through brute force. When size and power are wielded well, there is little that he cannot do.
Except for magic. Bel can’t do that magic thing.
That’s probably for the best. He would be monstrously unbearable with it.
She may be small, but she does nothing to hide her approach, and well before the small palomino (rather fetching, really, the way the brow-beating sun glints off her golden skin- a different glint than the sun off his white horn) he turns to see who is coming. So he resumes peering up at the sides of the mountains, staying silent until she says something. “I’m looking for a clear path. Nothing worse than getting up and then finding that you can’t get back down.” He would know – he once lived on Mourning Mountain. Dying up on those wind-torn, skinny little walkways was not a fate he wanted for any of his herd. You know, back when he cared about such a thing.
“Belgarath,” he says by way of introduction, his voice deep and resonant and a tad gravelly. “You, oh wise one?”
Because who doesn’t like a little bit of banter in the morning?
belgarath
Ha I always forget he has a horn now
Harmonia understands fear and intimidation. Not because of her physical attributes - she is small, thin, she is a tiny thing really. It's a wonder she survived any pregnancy without magic, because any child would surely overpower her. No, she incited fear a much different way. She would use her magic to make others see their greatest nightmare, or remove bits of their body and hide it places, threatening never to return it. Harmonia used to play the part of a simpleton and act as though she was unaware she was causing such harm.
The simpleton bit was useless when you had no magic, though. Because then you were weak inside and out. Others would try to protect her - something she couldn't stomach. Feigning weakness to make your child start a war you always wanted, or to manipulate others into doing things so you didn't have to (she is lazy, truth be told) - that was her power.
This? This was nothingness.
She sighs a heavy sigh. "To die wouldn't be the worst thing," she says, a murumur really. "Harmonia," she answers shortly after, blinking down at the wasteland. "Truly, our bones would be the perfect decor." HARMONIA the pied piper
Harmonia needn’t worry - Belgarath is not the protecting type. He's far more likely to be ravager - whether or not that's worse in her eyes, Bel doesn't care. He’s a jerk and an asshole and while he finds the little palomino’s back end rather appealing, he imagines there’s more to her than meets the eye. There is no other reason for her to be here amongst the discontent. Bel is big, not stupid, and he isn’t about to invoke someone’s wrath unless he is sure he can beat them.
She is correct, however. Dying isn’t the worst thing. There are things that go bump in the night; things that can cause unrelenting pain with a single tough. Things that have no name. Dying ends it all, whereas enduring breaks a being, little by little, chunk by chunk. “Yeah, but I’m not about to see if you’re right.” He looks down at Harmonia, gobbling up her skin with a hungry, calloused gaze. “Could always try and go around” Tap it from the back. His shoulders roll in a half-hearted shrug. “We’re not exactly needed to do His Majesty’s bidding around here.” Belgarath snorts derisively. There’s disappointment around every corner these days. He turns away from the mountains, and after a few steps, calls to the little golden mare. “Are you coming, Harmonia?”
belgarath
She doesn't shirk at his invitation.
She gives the slightest of smiles, a quick, curious upturn of the corners of her mouth as he agrees with her. Of course he agrees - Harmonia is always right. She is always right, always perfect, always flawless. With magic it was easier to hide behind this curtain and throw tomatoes at the crowd. Now there was no barrier, and she was helpless and useless. The thought made her cringe and she almost hoped she would fall to her death. At least that was a dramatic ending.
"Before here, you were a Tundra man?" Is it as much a question as a suggestion. Something about him reminded her of Covet, her eldest child. The least useless of them all - as if that were saying anything. The stuttering fool found his way to be king twice by means Harmonia would never understand. With those orange eyes and that hideous body (his fathers muscles, his mothers height) he was ghastly to look at. And yet, she missed the scarred creature. If not for the sole fact he worshiped her. HARMONIA the pied piper
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