this isn't neverland; halchon

[praise]

Her nose still smarts from the encounter with the crab. The crustacean was cruel and she dreamt of stomping them all to bits and eradicating the ashen shores of them. But she could hear her mother’s counsel in her ear already, about how everything had it’s place in the world from something as lowly as a crab to someone like Praise who had yet to even find her place in it. She was too content, so much so that it bred malcontent in her and she felt like she was beginning to despise the heat of Tephra despite her attempt to keep herself cool in the blue length of the river.

 

Praise starts to think of darker places, like forests that promise no way out and deep tangles of moss and root. She’d even prefer a cave right now, full of spiders and damp just to keep the sun off her pale apricot back. Beneath it, she gleamed as bone does in the light, sleek and inviting because Tephra had been good to her, kept her sheltered and she’d never once thought to leave it, even to explore. So she grew not quite fat but well cared for, feasting on marsh grass and seaweed. She grew up and into herself, small and sharp, like a primrose but one that belonged to no bush and began to go wild simply because she had no direction and no idea on what to do with herself.

 

Being a productive member of the land held no interest for her, and she watched the members of her family come and go like the seasons. She was the only one that stayed, fixed like a star, on the shores and slopes of Tephra. Until now, as the malcontent unsettles her and uproots her, drives forth from all that is familiar and towards the dark of the forest that beckons on long spindled fingers of branch and twig, as if to say come here. First her step was emboldened as she took to the dappled paths of light and dark, felt them play across her pale apricot skin as she moved ever deeper and the light grew less and the dark became more.

 

Praise grew timid, less sure of herself and soon enough she was sure she wasn’t on the same trail any more. This was new, this sensation of being lost and it left her with a puzzled frown on her face as she looked this way and that, seeing only thick tangle of tree after tree and shadow after shadow. It occurred to her that there must be wolves in a place like this, and not all wolves wore the same shape instinct would make her run from. This pinched her face further into disapproval as she glared at the tricksy path beneath her feet as if the way out lay in the secrets the dirt would not tell her about. She huffed, and dug her hoof at the path to ease some of her frustration but it did little to settle the fast growing thump of her heart in her thin unnerved breast.

[Halchon]

halchon

sometimes quiet is violent

He had quickly grown accustomed to wandering. Now that he was out from under his father’s oppressive thumb, breathing the fresh air that just escaped his grasp in the Cove, he had no real interest in returning this night. 

He walked, stumbling only when his legs became ensnared in the weaving undergrowth beneath his hooves or when a particularly tricky thought or memory pressed its way to the forefront of his mind. Before long, he had walked the perimeter of the forest, skirting the edge of the trees before spiraling out and back in again. 

In and out, in and out. He lost track of how many times he completed this pattern, but by the time he had stopped he was coated in a thin sheen of sweat that chilled him as the sun and its subsequent warmth disappeared behind the trees. 

Most of the horses that populated the Forest were gone for the night; they had either found some place to rest or gone home. But Halchon continued to wander, not yet ready to let the ghosts of his past grow louder, as they always seemed to do the closer he got to the Cove. 

Before long, he had come upon yet another wanderer; a mare with a peachy pearlescent sheen to her coat stood not far off from him, but he could tell from the way that her guard was still down that she either didn’t see him or didn’t perceive him as a threat. Both were an equally large mistake. 

She was small and pretty, carefully put together like so many of the mares he had known and abused in his life. The pale rosy tint to her skin made her appear almost porcelain, like a doll that was liable to break at any given time. Her narrow chest heaved with panicked breaths, and the faint smell of sweat given off of her nervous frame made Halchon close his eyes and inhale deeply. 

His face and his stride were nonchalant as he took his first step towards her, then his second. As startling or hurting her was not his intention (not yet anyways) he did nothing to try to conceal the sounds resulting from his approach. A twig snapped her, a bush nudged to the side there. 

He wanted her to think she was in control, that he posed no danger to her. Though words had never been his strong suit, his handsome face was, and he made sure it was directly in the mare’s field of vision as he completed his approach. 

“Lost?” He croaked, the simple word and the struggle it was for him to expel it a testament to the years he had spent neglected and alone in the Cove, lacking company that had any interest in the few words he spoke.

Yikes, it's rough! I'm sorry I'm still trying to get a feel for him

[praise]

Her heart began to calm itself;

Only because she felt stagnant upon the path. Less and less of the sunlight found her pale apricot flesh, and both the forest and the shadows in it seemed to touch first her slim haunch, then her narrow back, and finally her slender throat where her pulse leapt one last time like a frightened fish. She sucked in a deep pungent breath of moss and mouldering earth and this calmed her further, at least into thinking that the forest wasn’t all that bad. Couldn’t be all that bad, as she heard the squeaks and chirps of squirrels and birds, and places that had squirrels and birds in them were not evil, right?

 

Praise narrowed her eyes, sensing that time had abandoned her as much as the sun had. That must mean night had come for the squirrels raced through the branches overhead then disappeared. Most of the birds flapped their feathers and hunkered down for the night in branch-nests and bark-nooks, trilling their last few notes to a dusk she never saw but felt like an hour wrenched savagely from her gut. She harrumphed and stomped her feet on the path in a small tantrum. It was for show, though who was there to see it but those that crept through the growing dark? She told herself it was for show but it was for her to ease out more frustration at having gotten lost, thinking that this would not have happened to Prevail.

 

There was a noise on the trail up ahead of her and she swung her narrow head towards it, unable to mask the expectant glimmer of hope on her face. A stallion! No, she perceived him to be no threat and she did not realize how stupid of her that just might be, but she was too glad to recognize the scent and shape of another of her own kind - horse, plain and simple as that, and she let loose a throaty whicker of relief. “Thank whatever!” she muttered, believing in no god but good simple earth underfoot and the broken spine of a raccoon nearby - those things she believed in, because she could see and smell and touch them, but the things that relied on blind faith, she lacked.

 

He sure made an awful lot of noise though…

Praise almost thought to shush him in his approach lest he attract those things that think of horses like them as delectable meals and she had no desire to become that broken bleeding thing that something else feeds on. However… she looked him over, from his nonchalance to his odd spots and it was his spots that she couldn’t stop staring at instead of his handsome face. Something looked to be not quite right with them and Praise felt her nose itching to touch but she kept her chin tucked almost to her breast giving him an impertinent look before barking, “Of course I’m lost!”

Her face almost softened as his croaking sounded rather froggy and she might have pitied him for a moment. “I’m sorry, it’s dark and I’m lost and I don’t quite think I like it out here.” Praise sighed and sidled closer to him, more for the sake of having another horse near her rather than warmth or attraction or any of that. He seemed able-bodied and built of muscle even if that muscle had seen little use, she couldn’t tell and didn’t dare ask if he knew how to defend them because her mind surged to what - wolves or monsters?

 

She knew they were all the same, terrible and true to their beastly natures and he - he seemed like a decent enough fellow. Sighing again, she offers him a wry smile and her name, “I’m Praise.” and just like that, she trusted too easily enough.

ooc: no worries! i like him and i'm in the same boat with praise lol, still figuring her out.