We are at war. There will be scars.
Don't take it personally, Da. It's not your fault that the spirits picked such a difficult mark. In his own way Erebor is almost impossibly straight-laced, so clean-cut that it almost blows the mind to think of it. He is proud without being haughty. He is strong without being overconfident. He is so many good things that he's forgotten how to let himself be a horse, how to make friends and frolic and play with the others who are his age. He's chosen instead to skip that step, to hop over to adulthood and the serious life. No doubt he’ll regret it when he inevitably grows old and finds himself alone.Alone, but at the epicenter of a very powerful Chamber of Evil.
He may not be proud in the traditional way, he may be surprisingly immune to Da's delusions of grandeur, but that doesn't stop him from having ambition.
His smile never wavers as she speaks. It plays with his black lips, tender and delicate as a flame. He is watching her just as she watches him, the two of them circling each other like predators. They are gladiators, and although she's got an advantage in her witchcraft, it’s still so nascent that they are, for all intents and purposes, completely evenly matched.
He ignores her direct response because he simply doesn't have an especially good comeback to it right now. Instead, he jumps on her last sentence, letting it pull him into a pensive gaze across the vast openness of the meadow. The smile fades gently from his lips, replaced with a delicate consideration.
Face neutral, he gives her an answer he thinks suitable. "I came out here to meet new horses, and to learn about them." Really it's almost entirely true. He pauses, still largely unsmiling, teetering on the knife's edge before toppling headlong into his often-suppressed curiosity.
"Knapweed." he says, his voice half as though he can't believe it, and half as though he's tossing the name around in his mouth. He considers the riot of nature all around them and tries (and not for the first time, either) to understand who she might be, and how she had known him.
Rudely, awkwardly he skips over the questions she's asked and what she's said in favor of what he wants to talk about. "Tell me, Da, how did you know my name?" his voice is rich, even just a touch suave, very pleasant to listen to. And he is learning how to use it to his best advantage.
Erebor
Native Prince of the Chamber
warship x straia