life unfolds in pools of gold
I am only owed this shape if I make a line to hold
He has no use for treachery or deceit, no desire to spin webs or gamble with fate.
Buckthorn is simple in this way, perhaps. He doesn’t trust what he cannot see, what he cannot feel. He won’t stick his neck out on the line for a whim or the aligning of stars on a cold, clear night. He believes in the might of his own muscles. He knows that it is irresponsible (and dangerous) to take on more than one’s back can carry. He knows that if he did and his legs collapsed beneath him, it would be his own fault. This is why he’s never had a use for organizing before now, never sought out a home in the multitude of kingdoms of Old Beqanna – all they were good for was eating up lands that could have been free and wide instead of regimented and divided. He would have much rather kept a few good women on a few parcels of prairie, a harder life but a wilder one, too. The fulfillment of keeping food in their bellies, water on their tongues, and cougars from their throats would have been enough for him for a lifetime. He’s done it before, after all, has the scars to prove it.
However, this new world is anything but simple. The black and white stallion is an anomaly here. But rather than to accept his fate and be washed out to a watery grave with the tide, he had stuck fast, stubbornly. He had risen – is rising – to his feet like some seaborn messiah.
And already, he’s being greeted as such.
“Just you wait, there’s more where that came from, Miss.” Buck’s chocolate eyes crinkle as he takes in the admittedly pretty lady who’s concern simply radiates off of her. Really, he’s almost knocked back into the ocean from the force of it. “Oh, but don’t worry about me. I’ll stumble out all on my own.” And stumble he does. His knees wobble gracelessly as he strains to become upright once more. The sand is finer here than it had been near the jungle (that had been thicker, mixed with dark, rich dirt) and he is unused to its surface. The blue woman is so close that he knocks into her with his shoulder. He would have completely fallen into her, but he throws himself forward instead and nearly tastes the sand.
It isn’t the most masculine he’s ever felt, crawling around on the beach like a colt with new legs and no idea how to use them. But then, he’s never considered his vulnerabilities a weakness the way other men tend to, especially in front of women. He rather views them as learning experiences, growing experiences. Surely, he’s learned not to underestimate the current of this New Beqanna ocean (so different and yet so similar to the other). Buckthorn is spent, both physically and emotionally, so he relaxes totally in the mare’s company. “You smell like Her.” His thick, knotted mane sticks to his neck as he turns to point out the ocean he has just emerged from. The same abyssal brine rises from her mottled skin as he turns back to look at her, reverence quickly fading from his eyes. “Where am I?”
buckthorn