12-19-2017, 10:05 PM
 i'll use you as a makeshift gauge of how much to give and how much to take Ivar has made no secret of his entertainment, of the myriad of ways (and whos) that he uses to pass the time. There is no reason he shouldn’t, after all – the threat of danger in Sylva had gone the way of the red eyed wraith; they live in a time of peace. Loess is a nothing kingdom, quiet and unobtrusive, of no threat or interest to powers great or small. In the old days, it might have been called a herd land were the geographical area not so vast. This does not bother Ivar; he lives a life of ease and satisfaction. For most of the year, anyway. Autumn has always been difficult for the kelpie. It is only nature, of course, nature and base instinct. Nothing abnormal, nothing sinister, or indicative of aberrant psychopathy. The black and white creature is a kelpie more than he is a horse. He belongs in the water, deep beneath the surface where the light of the sun cannot reach. He longs for open spaces, for full moons and for plentiful prey. It’s only natural. Here in Loess, where he has surrounded himself with willing prey, he is able to hunt for sport and not out of necessity. It keeps the mares safe – from the threat of the outside world and Ivar himself. That is all he needs, and he has reached a blissful sort of equilibrium even if the water situation is lacking in the most severe sort of way. Ivar makes do. He had been doing perfectly fine before Isobell had arrived this chill fall evening. The silver shores of Nerine and the silver eyes of its queen had been absent from his thoughts for all of a blissful autumn week, and she ruins that by suddenly appearing, in the flesh, for the first time in a half-year. That she has the audacity to even think of feeling exasperated or irritated is baffling. He is the one who has the right to those feelings, he is the one who has had his perfect day – his perfect life – interrupted by an old fling. And yet, he lets himself by guided by her frantic actions, lets himself be shuffled closer to the sea. He doesn’t think of those ‘stupid little women’ that he leaves behind in Loess. He doesn’t think of much at all, and not until the sea swallows his pale legs does he really meet Isobell’s gaze. “I did this to you,” he says, not in reply to anything that Isobell has spoken aloud, but in revelation of his own thoughts. Sometime, perhaps last fall when they’d joined beneath the ocean or when he’d floated beside her body in the blood red water, sometime: something had changed. He’d changed it. Isobell has not been the same since, and the coincidence of a full year’s passing does not pass by unnoticed. Castile had called him on it, but Ivar had truthfully denied recent contact with Isobell. Now she is here, with eyes as brighter and more beautiful than the full moon overhead. There is hunger in those eyes, a carnal need that is absent in Ivar’s mahogany gaze as he searches Isobell’s face. (He had spent himself on the roan not a half hour past and he is still not entirely sure that Isobell’s presence is not a dream; best to not rise too early to hope.) The salt spray leaves droplets of water that glisten in the moonlight, pale spots along her raven hide and dark against her snow white. Despite his armor of dragon scales and weaponized jaw, the black and white stallion feels rather vulnerable as he listens to her plead. “What if I want more than just this?” Too bad, he answers himself; Nerine is more important. Nerine, with its high cliffs and frozen winter sea; it is no more a home for a kelpie than Loess. Isobell will not let him live the life he needs, and he despises being kept more even than his father had. Two generations, locked in the cliffs. No, no he will not repeat Stillwater’s mistakes. When he’d asked her last, she had not been like this. The thought is wayward – unexpected. It is true though, he muses. Whatever this is, whatever he has done…perhaps it was for a reason. She’d come up breathing from beneath the ocean once before. Perhaps it is time to make sure she can do it again, even with Ivar complete. That is what it had been, of course, the horse was an adult but the kelpie needed more time to mature. Shooting blanks and scrabbling against an undeveloped tide; Ivar was a juvenile the last time he’d left Isobell. Mimicking, that’s all he’d been doing. Stepping deeper into the surf, Ivar slides a longer muzzle down the curve of Isobell’s belly. The stallion catches the wind tossed strands of her tail between his sharp teeth, tugs them down as he lets his forelegs buckle beneath him. His upper body disappears beneath the black water, and a white finned tail follows it down. Below, the light is dimmer and the world clearer. Ivar twists back to nip at Isobell’s pale ankle, the deeper water and his tail allowing him far more freedom of movement than he’d had during their last swim. He’d asked, he reasons with himself, he’s made it clear that he wants more. That he wants this swim to be more than a swim, that he wants it to mean something more. He isn’t quite sure what that something might be (doesn’t dare think it) but is sure of what will make Isobell more amenable to the idea. Ivar’s playful bite at her ankle happens again on her opposite hind leg, but the contact doesn’t end with Ivar pulling away. Instead, he slides his muzzle up the mare’s leg, feeling the cool click of her scales against his. He stops abruptly, catching a few locks of hair in his gentle teeth that place a teasing nip on the dark of her inner thigh before he is gone again in the night dark water. “A swim?” Repeats the pale faced stallion as he bobs up above the water, a little farther out to sea than a moment before. “That’s all you wanted?” minimal smoky grullo tobiano | equus kelpus |