04-04-2021, 11:18 PM
The sound of her voice is lost in that rush of noise that fills his ears and drowns out the sound of the great waterfall and the singing of the shadow shrimp. It melts into the calling and the screaming and the laughter, the wordless muttering and the whispers that scratch across the back of his neck. He does not hear her voice, but he notices the dragging sound of her footsteps and if he could growl, he might, but instead he stamps a thick foreleg into the soft earth like a pillar between the scale-marked child still lying in a tangle of leg and delicate bone and whatever lame, lurching beast is coming. Flame-orange ears press flat against his poll, those storm-grey eyes like stones within the sea of his silvery mane.
It is not a monster that breaks through the foliage - at least, it is not obviously one, but he does not see at first that it is only a mare. He is angry and defensive and his vision is clouded by the shadows and the lies of the howling beasts hiding between the light of the magician's lanternbirds. It is only Gilda's position beneath him that saves Aquaria from the blind fury of a charge, that extra moment he takes to extricate himself from the child who has already turned her large eyes to the stranger and the clearing's edge. The girl's confusion becomes curiousity and though she wisely remains on the ground while her father frees his feet of her, the small wings tucked against her cheeks tremor lightly with the desire to go.
It feels like an eternity before Dace has pulled himself away from the child, but it is not very long. Time is so liquid when there's nothing in the sky to track it by, when his adrenaline is turning his blood to fire, but when he looks again, he sees her - really sees her - and the exhaustion on her face is like a mirror. He wants to rush to her side, ever gallant, but the soft laughing oh that escapes from Gilda's lips as she harnesses those impossibly long legs reminds him of his priorities. Injured mares... his lips twist into a conflicted frown.
"Who are you?"
Less a question than a demand. He ignores her question, swinging his haunches around to bar the stranger's path to his daughter (and vice versa.) She could be another trick of the monsters, but even as his mind rings with suspicion, his eyes trace the story written across her swollen hocks and bloodied haunch and his heart twists on itself.
What if she isn't?
How can he care for two?
It is not a monster that breaks through the foliage - at least, it is not obviously one, but he does not see at first that it is only a mare. He is angry and defensive and his vision is clouded by the shadows and the lies of the howling beasts hiding between the light of the magician's lanternbirds. It is only Gilda's position beneath him that saves Aquaria from the blind fury of a charge, that extra moment he takes to extricate himself from the child who has already turned her large eyes to the stranger and the clearing's edge. The girl's confusion becomes curiousity and though she wisely remains on the ground while her father frees his feet of her, the small wings tucked against her cheeks tremor lightly with the desire to go.
It feels like an eternity before Dace has pulled himself away from the child, but it is not very long. Time is so liquid when there's nothing in the sky to track it by, when his adrenaline is turning his blood to fire, but when he looks again, he sees her - really sees her - and the exhaustion on her face is like a mirror. He wants to rush to her side, ever gallant, but the soft laughing oh that escapes from Gilda's lips as she harnesses those impossibly long legs reminds him of his priorities. Injured mares... his lips twist into a conflicted frown.
"Who are you?"
Less a question than a demand. He ignores her question, swinging his haunches around to bar the stranger's path to his daughter (and vice versa.) She could be another trick of the monsters, but even as his mind rings with suspicion, his eyes trace the story written across her swollen hocks and bloodied haunch and his heart twists on itself.
What if she isn't?
How can he care for two?
@[Aquaria]
