03-07-2018, 02:16 PM
Everything changes, leaving them standing at one end of the arena in their clusters, a tree at the other end. Even from here, Mosrael can smell the sweet apple scent of the tree, but also the darker undertone of snake. Her heart beats faster, wondering if this serpent is venomous or of the horse-squashing kind.
She is afraid, but courage is not the absence of fear, but the overcoming of it. So the little spotted is mare is amongst the first to charge, nimble feet carrying her to the tree shoulder-to-shoulder with several others. At the last minute she slows up just enough to look up into the branches, trying to see the dread creature. And - there - a flash of scale differentiates him from the bark and leaves and Mosrael throws herself the other way around the tree in a twist of brown limbs.
Another leaps brings her to the lowest of branches and she snatched an apple from the foliage, ears pinned to her head as she prepares to duck out of the way of any flash in fangs or coils of scaly snake. It comes before she has time to take a deep breath and go back to the goddess, the open mouth of the reptile diving not for her but someone standing next to her, reaching up for their own apple. She can’t yell because of the golden fruit she already carries, so Mosrael does the next best thing, throwing herself bodily into the stranger, throwing them both to the ground. They are a tangle of limbs for a moment before she recovers, wincing as she gains her feet, but neither of them seem to be bitten, which was of course the goal. Amber eyes memorize the stranger’s presumably surprised face and then she ducks out of the way of another of the serpent’s strikes and gallops back to the golden goddess, proferring her sweet prize.
A heavy warhorse was called a “destrier”.
She is afraid, but courage is not the absence of fear, but the overcoming of it. So the little spotted is mare is amongst the first to charge, nimble feet carrying her to the tree shoulder-to-shoulder with several others. At the last minute she slows up just enough to look up into the branches, trying to see the dread creature. And - there - a flash of scale differentiates him from the bark and leaves and Mosrael throws herself the other way around the tree in a twist of brown limbs.
Another leaps brings her to the lowest of branches and she snatched an apple from the foliage, ears pinned to her head as she prepares to duck out of the way of any flash in fangs or coils of scaly snake. It comes before she has time to take a deep breath and go back to the goddess, the open mouth of the reptile diving not for her but someone standing next to her, reaching up for their own apple. She can’t yell because of the golden fruit she already carries, so Mosrael does the next best thing, throwing herself bodily into the stranger, throwing them both to the ground. They are a tangle of limbs for a moment before she recovers, wincing as she gains her feet, but neither of them seem to be bitten, which was of course the goal. Amber eyes memorize the stranger’s presumably surprised face and then she ducks out of the way of another of the serpent’s strikes and gallops back to the golden goddess, proferring her sweet prize.
A heavy warhorse was called a “destrier”.