show them the joy and the pain and the ending; Wolfbane

[Wolfbane]

It’s not like her kind to be open or soft, and when he thinks her kind Wolfbane means the kind of horse who lacks a healthy measure of fear. Heartfire is old, immortal even. The lines of her face that remain slack aside from that singular, raised brow are undeniably youthful when he stares at them. She’s his grandmother and she’s outlived his father, and Heartfire has seen things Bane probably couldn’t imagine.

It made him wonder what she picked up along the way. That’s all.

But horses like the one standing across from him, family or not … they don’t tell those kind of secrets. His own father never explained how he’d been cursed exactly, and the only other creature who might know was long dead.

“Perhaps.” He agrees, softening around the edges. For once, the domineering sight-seer was beginning to actually sound like his relative. Someone who reminded him of Longclaw. “You know, I’ve always been suspicious of you … ” The pegasus smiles. “Especially after what you ‘showed’ us in Nerine.”

He shifts his wings, remembering the flash of memory that day and how it shocked him. Not because of how it had vindicated Dovev, because of how the scene had been set in the near past. Wolfbane remembers leaving that gathering with a knot growing between his forehead, stuck on the idea that Heartfire could either see all past times gone by or manipulate entirely the sight of those who were near her. Hell, he reasoned that it could be both.

“You have a real gift. Some thread of old ass magic, that’s for sure.” Bane shakes his head, ruffling the stiff crest of hair between his upturned ears.

From the tall, sweeping grass a late autumn insect flies to land on the stallion’s rump. He turns to look at the jade green beetle and tries to swat it loose with the bat of his tail, but the bug scuttles up and under the cover of a wing before he manages to shake it loose.

“Hmph.” Wolfbane snorts, ignoring it for now. “Anyways, can you blame me for being testy? You’re the elder here, so tell me: How would you deal with …  you?”

King of Loess : Leader of the Southlands

Wolfbane

@[Heartfire]