you help me lose my mind; any, kingdoms

[magnus]

you and I both know that the house is haunted
and you and I both know that the ghost is me

Magnus liked the field during the night. He liked the quiet, the stillness, the fewer souls milling around. In his experience, horses that came to the field during the night were souls who appreciated that too. Some came for more insidious reasons—but many came simply because they, like him, enjoyed the silence of it. Now that winter was settling around Beqanna, hugging her curves and valleys, it was even quieter. As Magnus descended upon the field, landing quietly on the frost-covered ground, he smiled in appreciation.

It did not take long for the golden stallion to see the mare standing off to the side. His mouth twisted into a frown as he watched her for a second, taking in the patches of missing hair and deformed ears, before he tucked his golden wings into his side and made his way over toward her. “Hello there,” he greeted gently, his voice husky and as smooth as honeyed whiskey. He did not stare at her deformities and instead just held her gaze calmly. Magnus had seen plenty of horses in worse shape—sometimes by birth and sometimes by the rigors of war—but he knew such scars were only skin-deep. They did not define.

“My name is Magnus.” One corner of his scarred lips rose into a crooked smile, and he glanced around them, where the darkness of night was beginning to deepen, the sky turning into a truer shade of black. “It is a pleasant evening. I enjoy the cold.” Different from the humidity of his birth home, different even from the mild bite of his current home, but still enjoyable. “So what brings you to the field this late at night?”

MAGNUS

once general. once lord. once king.