Like a flower waiting to bloom - Ivar

[Ivar]

I V A R i'll use you as a makeshift gauge of how much to give and how much to take Since the night with Heda, Ivar has been searching for water. It is everywhere, seeping up from the rocky ground in little pools and springs that cascade down stone and eventually flow north to the rivers or south to the flatlands before the forest begins. He is looking for more though, more than just a few small puddles to quench his thirst and splash in belly deep. Standing atop one of the taller bluffs at dawn, he had scented water nearby, but he has been circling the outcropping for nearly an hour and can find no way to reach what he is certain must be there. All he has found is a bit of water seeping between two large stones, a tiny spring barely worthy of the name. Frustrated, he bucks, kicking the sandstone behind him and doing nothing more than covering himself in a few displaced bits of stone and making his hooves sore. It takes him a moment to realize that the clatter of pebbles falling hadn’t all sounded as expected. Most of them had settled with taps on the dirt and grass around him, but there had been an unmistakeable plink of something being swallowed by the water. He turns to the boulder he had just kicked, his brown eyes wide as though expecting water to have suddenly appeared. It’s just the same rock as before: tall and dusty orange. Behind it, maybe? Ivar is a bit clumsy on his still-ringing hind hooves, but the scaled young stallion is at peak strength. He is soon clambering atop the stone, aided by a few smaller rocks and a childhood spent climbing boulders in Sylva. Balanced precariously, he can see what he could not from the ground or even the taller bluff this past morning. The small spring he’d been frustrated by was not a spring at all, but rather the overflow of a much larger pool of water. The rock he stands on (along with those nearby) is the barrier that keeps it from overflowing. The bluff face has been carved back by eons of dripping water, effectively shielding the pool from overhead sight. Ivar steps into the water with hesitation, sinking only to his withers, but he can tell from the shadows that the water is much deeper farther into the overhang. It is not an exceptionally large body of water – barely ten feet wide where Ivar stands, and perhaps fifty feet back to where the overhand slopes back down to meet the water, but it is by far the largest spring he has found in Loess. He is content to spend the rest of the day there –and the next day as well – but he eventually climbs back up to the orange stone and down to dry land. Shaking his head and neck, Ivar enjoys the cool drip of water down his spine. It has been too long since he was submerged, and it is almost as though it has given him more energy. Perhaps he’ll go to the River, today, he thinks, and remind himself what a current feels like. The smoky black piebald is on his way to that common land when he sees something – someone – familiar. “Kylin!” He calls out, spotting the familiar pattern of lavender and white even from a distance. Ivar changes his path to intercept her, drawing up closer to the smaller horse and offering her a wide smile. “You decided to come!” kelpie mimicry | dragon scales | tactile hypnosis

ooc: sorry for the novel. He needed a water