[open quest] Take a breath and slumber with me {ROUND ONE}

[Aela]

As the unfamiliar hand of a man pats her gilded skin, the palomino mare throws her blazed head up and away from the foul-smelling beast. His stench - and that of the other beasts - is almost overwhelming. Her delicate ears pin into the fine silk of her pale mane and the small creature lifts her pale lips in a brilliant flash of white, rebelling against the copper bit in her mouth: a warning of what will happen if he attempts such a gesture again. The thing known as Pollux laughs, a sound as warm as the honeyed brew that he and his brother had been drinking earlier.

"I think you would have been better off with a mule," the other brother known as Castor says, grinning wildly to his twin as if there wasn't a battlefield behind them. For a few moments, there isn't. There isn't; there are just these two brothers. The other man - Pollux - smiles almost shyly. He is leaner than his broad-chested brother, looks more like the lanky youths that have never seen a battle before (and might not live beyond this one). His touch comes gentler this time as he moves to readjust the bit and check the bridle. Aela tilts her head away from him but there is a knowing in his touch, a respect (a reverence) that wasn't there before.

She does not attempt to bite him, (yet).

"One does not question the Gods, brother." Pollux tells Castor, and this intrigues the golden mare who has always known that she was something divine and fate-forged. An ear flicks in their direction and she stands, allowing them both a brief reprieve because they seem to admire the way her gilded coat was illuminated by the sun. It shimmered and gleamed in a way that none of the other horses nearby did; they might be bulkier in build or of a temperament better suited for the battlefield but the small mare at that moment was truly a sight to behold. "I doubt even Aeneas has a mount so fine," he continues, speaking of their cousin and then Castor laughs again, a guffaw that breaks the spell they had been under as he slaps Pollux's back. "That, little brother, is a steed fit for Helios' chariot."

And then the laughter dies.

A horn sounding from the nearby encampment - the one that smells of unwashed bodies and too many animals living close together - and the brothers turn to each other. It a silent moment and with war so near on the horizon, the two siblings nod while Pollux returns to Aela and Castor leaves to retrieve his steed (some plain, brown beast that she would refuse to acknowledge). The man doesn't try to pat her again but he moves slowly, gathering pieces of tanned hide and metal while he continues to talk. She isn't sure if it is meant to comfort her, to make her understand how she got here or why, or if he means to reassure himself with his steady speech. Her near-white tail twirls when he comes close with the assembled leather and Pollux continues to speak with a kind of drawl to his voice; long and low, like much of the coastal landscape around the war camp. Softly rumbling, like the cadence of the waves on the beach.

Pollux's voice fills with flattery - that she is God-granted, that she is glowing like the sun, that she is beautiful as all Divine beings are - and then he ruins it.

He mars her golden hide with his saddle (she needed no other war adornments, Pollux claimed, not for the mare who was rumored to be swifter than Hermes himself). One foot goes up into the contraption and he heaves himself on her back, lacking any kind of grace. The other foot finds home in the stirrup and for a moment, Aela stands still. She has never felt this before; it bothers her in a way that the dream-like land and every other unfamiliar thing in this place does not.

So they stand and he sighs, thinking that the worst is over.

He clicks his tongue in a bestial way and digs his heels into her sides to urge her forward.

So forward she goes, shifting all her weight forward, forward, forward in an attempt to send him spiraling over her head. When that fails, she shifts her weight back, as Pollux shifts his to the back of his saddle, to send him rolling off her haunches. She careens her body this way and that, all in an attempt to get him off her as his seat shifts around. While Pollux had fumbled into the saddle and Aela had doubted his senses, it seemed he had enough of them to hold on. There would be no unseating him.

"Be sure to name that one Fury!" Castor calls out as he and his mount approach them at a brisk trot.

Aela is lathered in sweat and she can feel the anger rising in her, as dark and ominous as the storm clouds on the horizon. She goes to reach for it, thinking that she will make her rider feel so forlorn that he wouldn't wish to breathe again. But the tendrils of emotions that she has always had at her command aren't there; there is only Pollux above her. She tries again, relishing the way that she envisions that he will become so desperate to get away from her that he will race into the sea and drown himself. But nothing happens except another click of his tongue, another light dig of his heels into her slender barrel.

So forward, she goes.

Her mind plots and schemes as it always does. But he has roped her somehow, tied all her emotions and bound them as she is restrained by his bridle. She seethes, but there are no flames. There is nothing to burn his soft skin or set him aflame and so she turns her ire into finding a way forward that will set them both free. War waits for no one and it is already clamoring by the time the brothers arrive; there is the squeal of horses, the bitter tang of blood, and the clang of weapons as they clash.

Forward, Pollux bids her and so forward they go.

There is hollering and shouting. There is pleading and praying.
The sounds are a cacophony of chaos and something in the song hums to Aela; it is pure adrenaline.

They charge into the fray and she is as fast as the Gods promised she would be. The little mare - smaller than the baroque warhorses - carries Pollux forward through the lines of soldiers. She sees it out of the corner of her blue eyes - a spear hurdling towards them - intended for her rider. It comes fast but she is faster and quicker yet because of the rider and mount beside them. Because the weapon lodges itself through the throat of Castor instead of its aim, Pollux. Had they slowed, perhaps the leaner brother might have seen it coming.

Might have been able to warn or perhaps even save his brother.

But Castor - suffocating on his own blood - slumps in his saddle while the bay stallion leaps to the side, screaming as another hurdled weapon strikes him in the chest. Pollux pulls his reins to turn and see the source of the sound: his twin brother laying facedown in the sand while his blood eddies out into the bay where numerous ships float.

"Castor!", a blood-curdling cry that joins in the din of the battlefield. Pollux says the word over and over again, like it might change fate. It doesn't. The man dismounts and runs to his brother, cradling him as he dies, trying to wipe away the evidence of the war surrounding them with his tears. He rocks back and forth like the waves, saying a thousand prayers to every God that Pollux can think of in their pantheon.

Aela feels pleased.
She had done what he asked, after all. Forward, he commanded her.

She had done as he asked and then he learned the brutal truth: Gods have a price.