The afternoon is lazy, the sun sprawling across the sliver of cerulean sky, like some tangerine brushstroke. From what I can see in the heart of the forests, is but a silhouette of towering pines, and a small glimmer of the sun. Much to mother's displeasure, I had pleaded her to let me go deeper into the dark copse of trees. I wanted to learn like my father, how to track, how to find things, and primarily how not to get lost.
The bark is rough against my silvery hide, course and wobbly like old, worn fingers as the brush against me on my passing. I stop, lifting my head, nostrils fluttering and gauging the scents. Damp, everything is damp and dank and stale here. Harder to pick out familiarity, but it is there. The sweet rosewood of mother, the earthy musk of father. That is when I see it, a silver spun hair, caught on the branch, as if the knobbly bough would keep it safe, it's secrets hushed. I pick it up with my teeth, and as I do, I find another has been intertwined, a single black strand.
Ah.
The thought passes me and the frown that knits my features makes my face far harder, harsher than necessary. Sort of like the lines on the trees, nobbled, wrinkled. I pluck the hairs from their keeping in the branch and drop them to my feet, kicking over a few mounds of dirt and moss to cover them. Perhaps father would find them, such an expert tracker he was. Perhaps one day, one day indeed I could say that I could rival him, but not for a long time.
The ravens caw above, like black silhouettes against the splash of sapphire sky, they caw, they cry and they descend upon the boughs like an army of feathers. I chase them then, neck extending and hindquarters powering through the corpse, jumping over the fallen logs and weaving through the twisted boughs and gnarled trunks. Eyes cast upward, ears pushed back against my crow, more momentum, more aerodynamic. I raced them, faster, faster, until I broke the shadowy outskirts of the chamber and entered the clearing. Once again a loser against their broad wings and laughing caws.
My flinty hoof kicks at a lump of earth, and it rolls onward and brushes past a few inky feathers. Oh, they think their so great, those bloody birds. With my lowered crown, I did not see the flicker of flame at first, simply thinking it the reflections of the sun (it seemed such a rarity to have it here, in the chamber.). My gold eyes turn then, towards the swathe of orange and red, and they widen. They come from a stranger, a four legged lump of flesh and bone. Intrigued, I turn towards him, watching as he idles by the boundary, but barely there at all, consumed by the flame in some angles. I trot over, young, curious mind twisting and turning with thoughts, my lips piquing into a twist of sorts, not quite a smirk and not quite a smile.
'How do you do that, with the flames?' I ask, reaching nearer to him. Ears fluttering, tufty wisps of charcoal mane flopping over my forehead. The question sounded atypical of a youngster, so I broadened my shoulders, warmblood genes evident in my strapping, yet gangly young frame. I blow a snort, 'This is the Chamber.' I say, once again, perhaps too obvious for some, but you never know. He might be a complete stranger, but then again, perhaps not. I listen to my mother inside of my head, her words, cutting through, even now when she is not beside me, I hear her little lectures. 'I'm Vercingetorix. Who are you?' Hardly as tact as my mother, and not as soldieresque as my father, but I am me, I am Vercingetorix. And I'll have my own way, eventually, of doing this sort of thing.
