Keeper-
Somehow, she had missed him.
Bronze and scaled, he should have been a bright shimmering beacon beside the lake that drew her out but sometimes, Keeper misses the obvious. They said her head was in the clouds - it wasn’t, it was grounded in the earth the deer traveled over to the point that she knew every trail they took, every bed they kept, every cornfield they raided in the earliest morning hours. Keeper even knew the things they feared the most - wolf and bullet, arrow and jacklight. But she did not know this lake surrounded by trees not yet in blossom and further guarded by mountains tall and magnificent, or their king rumored to be much the same - tall and magnificent, like something out of a story.
(Keeper likes stories as much as she likes secrets.)
It is his sentiments and laughter that pulls her blackberry gaze away from the lake towards him. He is brilliant; amber, bronze, and gold and Keeper has never seen someone like him before. The stallion is a blend of things earthbound and bright, but his face is pleasant enough - not just to look upon but in expression, because it just never occurred to her that her trespass might be met with something other than the pleasantness that he greets her with. She never takes her eyes off of him as he moves closer; not wary and not refuting the closeness of him to her - it is in a horse’s nature to seek herd and home, to seek out those like themselves but Keeper does not belong, she defies the very laws that dictate their lives in such base instinct that hard is to ignore for all of their learned civility that has been bred into them after generations of such. How can one be feral and civil? It is not something that she asks herself of, much. But her eyes never leave his armored face.
Keeper ignores his name, not out of rudeness - she is socially inept and introductions are a bore. She is more interested in the other name he has mentioned, Hyaline and thinks back to his earlier expressed sentiment about never sickening of looking at it. She understands that best. Understands why the deer pass through here because it is a sanctum tucked safe from the rest of the world and all the ills in it. Not to mention the sheer pulchritude of the place! Keeper is at a loss as how to describe it other than that it feels right and she has never felt a sense of belonging like this (once, she thinks but that was with someone not somewhere).
She realizes that he is still looking at her and she is looking at him but it is like she did not see him standing there, but saw bucks battling one another for the rights to does and spotted fawns nursing from the tan flanks of their mothers. Keeper could feel the peace and she sighed before she said her name, “I’m Keeper.” It was a light sigh of something that felt like acceptance, like a little bit of that same peace that pervaded the air and seemed a part of it for all time. “How can something like this exist?” she murmured, not aware that she had voiced the thought out loud or that he might answer her.
not knowing how deep the woods are and lightless