11-13-2016, 06:54 PM
He moved through the forest quickly, as he had once dreamed of doing.
His cloven hooves barely touched the earth, the mulch barely flattening underneath his juvenile form. He could feel the power that had once been denied to him pounding in his chest, in his head. He could feel it and it felt natural. The last year walking along this year, stripped naked of his true form, felt almost like a bad dream—almost. He kept the memory of it tucked away, careful to not forget the powerlessness of it or the anger of being denied, but he indulged in the return of it. The gifts that he now flexed.
Soon, he would find his father and let him enjoy his gifts once more.
It would be the good thing to do, as a son. It would secure him a place as a favored child.
For now though, he simply enjoyed the moment—the power of being able to run faster than any around, the ability to run for hours without being winded, the agility that let him weave through the trees without care. It was only when he saw the brutish stallion that he slowed, that he checked himself first into a gallop more akin to a normal horse and then to a leggy trot and then, finally, to a walk.
It was only then that he made his way toward the other, a studious glint in his eye, a promise of something more flaring in his chest. Call it intuition. Call it whatever you may. He did not call upon the Fear—not yet. Instead he simply paused before the other, angling his head toward him, the silver of his forelock covering the bruised darkness of his left eye. “Hello there,” he greeted in a throaty whisper, the sound careful and calculated.
“What would you do to take back what has been stolen from you?”
It would be a question he repeated often in the coming year.
Bruise
head like a hole; as black as your soul.