silver rings and gypsy bells; any

[Offspring]

lend me your hand and we'll conquer them all.
but lend me your heart and i'll just let you fall.

   He is not certain what wills him to his place.

  Perhaps it is the deep, penetrating loneliness that has somehow crept up and found its way beneath his skin once again; familiar like an old friend. It seeps into his skin, saturating his pulsating muscles, his taut tendons, his joints and his bones. It saturates every organ, but most of all, his brain. He settles into a fog - a haze that leaves him vulnerable to the thoughts he had tried so desperately to bury deep within the recesses of his mind. He cannot stay in once place; he is restless. He knows what it waiting for him back within the icy confines of his permanent dwelling, and there was nothing more pervasively lonesome.

  He knew he would have to draw himself out of this, and soon, but he did not have the mental strength to. He had come into contact with a female that had elicited the same distinct feelings of attraction he had struggled to find in the seventy years of his life since the loss of his love, and though he had not been truly searching, she had come so abruptly into his life and left so swiftly that his mind was spun trying to interpret and understand it all. It was as if something had been so close to him, he could grasp it, yet he had not recognized it until it was gone. It left him with a sense of longing; it stirred up old emotions he hadn't allowed himself to feel in so long.

  It is these thoughts that he lingers on as he presses forward past a boundary he had never crossed before. His deep, dark red eyes are studying the landscape, taking in its every dip and lull. Gentle stalks of golden wheat lap gently and caress his skin as his massive form shifts through; his sinewy muscle ripples beneath his skin as he moves forward. He flicks his long, albeit tangled tail along his hock; batting away inevitable insects that seemed to multiply by the seconds this time of year. His movements cause the ground near him to rattle slightly as he disturbed the sediment with his weight, and it is the sudden, soft laughter of another that causes him to so still.

  His ears swivel and his muzzle lower as his nostrils flair; he can sense her long before he can see her. He steps forward again, peering over the long tangled treads of wheat, finding a rather peculiar young female (she could not be very old; the sweetness of her skin's scent reminded him of his own children many moons ago) admiring her own shift of color. Offspring had seen many things in his time, but this was a particularly unusual skill - and for the first time in weeks, he found his lips folded in the uptick of a smile. He'd forgotten how bright-eyed and wondrous new life could be.

  He peered around the silent land for a moment, and a conclusion settles on him that she has been left here. He now recognized the scent that had permeated the land and washed over him when he had stepped over its unseen boundary. He had stumbled across a sweet, now cocoa-tinted filly, oblivious to her condition, her status or her whereabouts. Her simplicity and zest for life was already wearing down his resolve; he had forgotten how beautiful the little things in life could be.

  Gently, he spoke, hoping not to startle her. "Good morning, little one - my name is Offspring. What is your name?"

OFFSPRING