Isolation and loneliness are nothing new to the pale stallion. It is a protection perhaps, protection against the cruel vagaries of this world. If one never grows close to anyone, one must never need feel the pain of their loss. When immortality reigns, one must do what they can to protect the heart, or they shall rapidly turn into something unrecognizable. Something despised.
He had thought, once, it was safe to love his kingdom. There was safety in attachment to a place, because places are eternal. Oh how Beqanna must have laughed in showing him the error of his ways. The heartbreak of that loss rivals (indeed, perhaps even surpasses) any heartbreak of the romantic variety. And though Hurricane has carefully guarded his heart these long decades, even he has not always been so hard and immovable. It is merely the years of eternal life that had crafted the man now wading amongst the shallows upon a foreign, unfamiliar beach.
The two men standing there in brotherly reticence could not display more perfectly just what eternal life can forge. Just how differently two can live it and still inevitably end the same. Life has a funny way of showing just how little choice one truly has in the destination of it.
But it seems life still has a sense of humor, that even as ancient and calloused as the black and white stallions are, they can still be surprised. Though whether Hurricane would ascribe that to the vagaries of life or the vagaries of a certain magician is an entirely different story. Certainly he has never been terribly inclined to give most magicians much in the way of benefit of the doubt.
At the moment however, the exchange of power goes entirely unnoticed by him. He is old, but he has no supernatural senses with which to become aware of such things.
“Home,” he rumbles, his voice a low, husky murmur. It is home to Offspring, but it is far from home to Hurricane. He would stay a while, perhaps. Would see if he could grow to care for the land even a fraction as much as Offspring seems to. But he is certain that nothing will ever be home again in quite the same way the Tundra was.
“Thank you, brother.” No further words are necessary. Those simple sentences say all he needs to. If anyone could understand, it would be the man before him.
Of course, little did he know he would soon have several reasons to stay. At least for a little while longer.
there is never a day that goes by
that is a good day to die
Hurricane