09-02-2020, 03:25 PM
Yanhua
Yanhua stood finishing a late dinner, eyes half-closed. He chewed thoughtfully and considered all the peace this past year or so had brought with it, slapping his thick-but-short tail against his hide, and swallowed the last bite with a sigh. Taiga was filled to the brim with quiet, familiar company. Nashua was off to the isle, now the Kingdom seat of the entire northern territories. Personally, he was healthy and a bit more grown for his species, and lastly (but most importantly) his mother had come home… after Aela.
Adrift with these thoughts and others like them, Yanhua breathed in the mist coming off the river nearby and closed his eyes, shutting out the world of conifers and evening sunlight. There was peace enough to be found out here away from the others, even if it was getting harder to find reasons for avoiding company these days. Oftentimes when his rounds were finished he’d checked in with either his mother, Izora, or some of the other Taigans before slipping off to practice a bit with his magic, and lately these exercises had begun to include a bit of meditative work as well.
All of this in the past year, and nearly all of it eclipsed by the most obvious of his changes: adulthood. The headaches and leg cramps that plagued Yanhua’s childhood receded and disappeared, his hooves split entirely and hardened from the constant exercise of border patrol, and his fuzzy little chin was now adorned by a long, refined-looking goat’s beard. Once a young colt, now a stallion sporting two wickedly curved horns, Yanhua had lost the shy look and adopted a more sincere one for a change.
“Mom, please.” Yan answered Lilliana in a deepening voice, managing to open his eyes while rolling them. He flicked his ears and turned around on the stilts she was presently joking about, looking down into her mirror-blue eyes.
“We both know the problem is you’re getting shorter.” He stated factually, though the jibe was quickly followed by a step or two in Lilli’s direction and a stretch of his neck so that mother and son could bump their noses together like a warm hug. An old Beqanna greeting, even if Yanhua missed the days when he could lean into the curve of her strong, tattooed shoulder.
“Nothing crazy to report from the other side of our woods?” He asked rhetorically, expecting her quiet arrival as an affirmative to his question. Likewise, the state she’d found him in meant that his patrol had been uneventful as well. Only once in the short time of his being a warrior for Taiga had Yanhua come across a horse with nefarious intentions, but since then the job had become more routine than anything. “I kind of hope it lasts, though. Now that things are changing for our home.” He hedged the topic of Leilan ascending to Kingship.
What of Neverwhere? He wanted to ask Lilliana. What of aunt Brazen and the other Nerinian mares, or Lethy and Taiga? What did all of this sudden change truly mean for them and why had his mother agreed to it?
Yanhua had wanted to be a fly on that pelt so badly, listening in to the conversations shaping his destiny and the future of all lives burning for the Northern lands, but he was just a boy then - barely a stallion now. His pining for inclusion and importance had been a colt’s dream a year ago. Today? He quirks his mouth in a smile that compliments him best, and waits for his mother to answer him.
Adrift with these thoughts and others like them, Yanhua breathed in the mist coming off the river nearby and closed his eyes, shutting out the world of conifers and evening sunlight. There was peace enough to be found out here away from the others, even if it was getting harder to find reasons for avoiding company these days. Oftentimes when his rounds were finished he’d checked in with either his mother, Izora, or some of the other Taigans before slipping off to practice a bit with his magic, and lately these exercises had begun to include a bit of meditative work as well.
All of this in the past year, and nearly all of it eclipsed by the most obvious of his changes: adulthood. The headaches and leg cramps that plagued Yanhua’s childhood receded and disappeared, his hooves split entirely and hardened from the constant exercise of border patrol, and his fuzzy little chin was now adorned by a long, refined-looking goat’s beard. Once a young colt, now a stallion sporting two wickedly curved horns, Yanhua had lost the shy look and adopted a more sincere one for a change.
“Mom, please.” Yan answered Lilliana in a deepening voice, managing to open his eyes while rolling them. He flicked his ears and turned around on the stilts she was presently joking about, looking down into her mirror-blue eyes.
“We both know the problem is you’re getting shorter.” He stated factually, though the jibe was quickly followed by a step or two in Lilli’s direction and a stretch of his neck so that mother and son could bump their noses together like a warm hug. An old Beqanna greeting, even if Yanhua missed the days when he could lean into the curve of her strong, tattooed shoulder.
“Nothing crazy to report from the other side of our woods?” He asked rhetorically, expecting her quiet arrival as an affirmative to his question. Likewise, the state she’d found him in meant that his patrol had been uneventful as well. Only once in the short time of his being a warrior for Taiga had Yanhua come across a horse with nefarious intentions, but since then the job had become more routine than anything. “I kind of hope it lasts, though. Now that things are changing for our home.” He hedged the topic of Leilan ascending to Kingship.
What of Neverwhere? He wanted to ask Lilliana. What of aunt Brazen and the other Nerinian mares, or Lethy and Taiga? What did all of this sudden change truly mean for them and why had his mother agreed to it?
Yanhua had wanted to be a fly on that pelt so badly, listening in to the conversations shaping his destiny and the future of all lives burning for the Northern lands, but he was just a boy then - barely a stallion now. His pining for inclusion and importance had been a colt’s dream a year ago. Today? He quirks his mouth in a smile that compliments him best, and waits for his mother to answer him.
I GOT | Extra | FEELINGS
@[lilliana]