05-25-2020, 09:10 PM
The season felt all wrong. Yanhua couldn’t appreciate the world in bloom when his heart still felt trapped by winter. But he would do his very best to try; he knew that’s what his mother would want, after all.
When the sun was well overhead and his afternoon meal was eaten, the growing colt decided that - for once - a change of scenery might suit him. He needed to get out of Taiga for a little while, to forget the sad memories he associated with its shadows and hidden places, and besides: a vigorous walk tended to ease his growing pains.
He was growing, rapidly. Like a weed he’d sprouted up overnight and the closer he crept towards his second year of life, the more he began to change into the shape his body would (eventually) settle on. He tried not to think about what his father had said when Wolfbane had appeared out of thin air months ago, radiating a terrifying energy and bringing horrible waves of memories with him, but the harder he tried not to think about the shapeshifter the harder it was to deny the one useful thing his sire had said that day. Don’t worry about Yan, the manipulative creature had proclaimed to his twin sibling, He’ll be plenty good at other stuff.
And even though Yanhua hated to admit that anything about his sire could be ‘correct’, it was hard to deny the truth when it started to physically manifest itself on the maturing colt’s body.
Now, at nearly a year-and-a-half, Yanhua’s hooves had developed deep cracks that were splitting them all in two. The source of his headaches had risen up as two separate lumps on his forehead, which quickly developed into short horn nubs. Nashua had laughed about that until Yan showed him exactly what those nubs were good for. His chin had begun to get a bit fuzzier too, but all of the above he could accept and even felt a growing sense of excitement from - all except one change, or really a lack of change.
His tail simply refused to grow. It’d turned into golden flax, a much more rich color than Nashua’s due to its gleaming qualities, (he was trying his best to control that as well, some things take time) but the damn thing stubbornly refused to grow! His twin’s had long since doubled in length, hanging down between his hind legs like a pale, lovely thing. His? Yanhua could slap his hide with short, quick bursts of action but it really did no good otherwise. It really irritated him, and that was the energy he radiated as his long, skinny legs brought him out from the northern edge of Taiga and onto the wide pathway that wound up to Nerine.
He sighed and cut immediately west, uninterested in drawing too much attention to himself now that the forest was thinning. After growing up looking over his shoulder and sensing his mother’s constant fears and memories, the habit of wanting to avoid large, open spaces was a hard one to break. Instead he drifted off the worn trail and through a light smattering of pines and mingled cedars, where the ground cover was soft and silent from a thick layer of brown needles. Birds sang in high, melodic pitches. The sun here was much more bright and his glowing hair (what little he had, thank you very much) dimmed underneath the brilliance of true, unfiltered light. Yanhua breathed in the scent of the world around him, filled his chest with all the air Nerine could spare, and exhaled deeply as a practiced art of subduing his irate emotions.
Perhaps a freezing dip in the gray-blue sea would help? He thought as he neared the true edge of the treeline. Ahead, he could see where the land dropped off into thin air, knowing that the end of the world was only an illusion. If he got closer, he’d be able to find the little footpath that wound down to the invisible shoreline below. There he could find serenity in the constant noise of the ocean, and the backdrop of the granite cliffs would shelter him from passersby.
@[Amarine]
When the sun was well overhead and his afternoon meal was eaten, the growing colt decided that - for once - a change of scenery might suit him. He needed to get out of Taiga for a little while, to forget the sad memories he associated with its shadows and hidden places, and besides: a vigorous walk tended to ease his growing pains.
He was growing, rapidly. Like a weed he’d sprouted up overnight and the closer he crept towards his second year of life, the more he began to change into the shape his body would (eventually) settle on. He tried not to think about what his father had said when Wolfbane had appeared out of thin air months ago, radiating a terrifying energy and bringing horrible waves of memories with him, but the harder he tried not to think about the shapeshifter the harder it was to deny the one useful thing his sire had said that day. Don’t worry about Yan, the manipulative creature had proclaimed to his twin sibling, He’ll be plenty good at other stuff.
And even though Yanhua hated to admit that anything about his sire could be ‘correct’, it was hard to deny the truth when it started to physically manifest itself on the maturing colt’s body.
Now, at nearly a year-and-a-half, Yanhua’s hooves had developed deep cracks that were splitting them all in two. The source of his headaches had risen up as two separate lumps on his forehead, which quickly developed into short horn nubs. Nashua had laughed about that until Yan showed him exactly what those nubs were good for. His chin had begun to get a bit fuzzier too, but all of the above he could accept and even felt a growing sense of excitement from - all except one change, or really a lack of change.
His tail simply refused to grow. It’d turned into golden flax, a much more rich color than Nashua’s due to its gleaming qualities, (he was trying his best to control that as well, some things take time) but the damn thing stubbornly refused to grow! His twin’s had long since doubled in length, hanging down between his hind legs like a pale, lovely thing. His? Yanhua could slap his hide with short, quick bursts of action but it really did no good otherwise. It really irritated him, and that was the energy he radiated as his long, skinny legs brought him out from the northern edge of Taiga and onto the wide pathway that wound up to Nerine.
He sighed and cut immediately west, uninterested in drawing too much attention to himself now that the forest was thinning. After growing up looking over his shoulder and sensing his mother’s constant fears and memories, the habit of wanting to avoid large, open spaces was a hard one to break. Instead he drifted off the worn trail and through a light smattering of pines and mingled cedars, where the ground cover was soft and silent from a thick layer of brown needles. Birds sang in high, melodic pitches. The sun here was much more bright and his glowing hair (what little he had, thank you very much) dimmed underneath the brilliance of true, unfiltered light. Yanhua breathed in the scent of the world around him, filled his chest with all the air Nerine could spare, and exhaled deeply as a practiced art of subduing his irate emotions.
Perhaps a freezing dip in the gray-blue sea would help? He thought as he neared the true edge of the treeline. Ahead, he could see where the land dropped off into thin air, knowing that the end of the world was only an illusion. If he got closer, he’d be able to find the little footpath that wound down to the invisible shoreline below. There he could find serenity in the constant noise of the ocean, and the backdrop of the granite cliffs would shelter him from passersby.
@[Amarine]