01-12-2017, 10:33 AM
don't forget that this is a choice.
pick your poison; live with remorse.
pick your poison; live with remorse.
Volcanic ash sifts gently, merging with the soft and fertile soil that lay beneath and pressing firmly around the minuscule, jagged edges of each hoof. Encased in the remnants of another pyroclastic flow, he can feel the heat of pooling lava near the very base of the volcano, though it is winding away from him - the light breeze carries its warmth across the plain. Faint beads of sweat trickle across his dark, but flawed flesh, the puckered pink scars glimmering beneath the rays of bleak sunlight that shines down overhead.
Once the King of snow and ice, it is wholly ironic to now be engulfed by heat and fire, though it burns within him as much as it stirs discomfort from him externally. He is not built for endurance in the heat, and yet he has adjusted, ignoring how the bristling heat of the lava and the humidity of a descending winter (never cold enough for him, but then again, nothing is as the tundra winters were to him). Still, his muscles twitch and roll irritably, tensing slightly as another warm breeze trails along the faint slope of his spine. He has grown numb to many things, but he can never shake the longing for the frigid and unforgiving winters he had once so willingly endured.
Shaken from his momentary reverie, his piercing red eyes stir from their intently set position, lazily gazing towards the rustling noise to the east. Suddenly, in a heartbeats' time, she is close to him, her powerful legs carrying her through the wavering stalks of grain, which sway so easily in the breeze. A familiar face (in his many years, he had yet to forget a face), and one not seen in what seems like many eons. Something stirs within him at the stark reminder of what he had once possessed, of what he had lost. She was iron and steel, but her unyielding smile and joy remind him too well of days when he had once been made of blistering, frigid ice, and it both soothes and frustrates him.
Alas, her presence is an unexpected but appreciated one - he had spent too much time in solace for the day, and he often succumbed too easily to darker thoughts when the loneliness set in before dusk. Her broad skull dips slightly upon approach, and a low, rumbling chuckle rises from his chest, a wry smirk reaching his whiskered lips as he shifts his behemoth weight from one leg to another. "Jord; of course I remember you," He muses for a moment, his eyes following the hardened lines of her body. He recalled well how she had come to the brotherhood, assisting him in shattering the perceived image of the frigid land by working with him diplomatically to establish a new normal. "I may be old but I am far from senile. It is good to see that you. How have you been?"
He is not certain that he desires any depth to her answer; but the familiarity of her darkened face is enough to pry a genuine smile from him and a curious tilt of his head in inquiry.
offspring