11-05-2022, 08:25 AM
The spotted mare trots to catch up with him, then slows to walk abreast. Her cheery attitude remains as they continue. Malik points out a few good places for grazing, and a low-growing apple tree, then flicks his dark ears back to listen to her speaking.
Something about the way she speaks reminds him of the fairies, the certainty of her words paired with his slow comprehension. He chooses instead to focus on what he does understand when he answers: “Things like patrols, or escorting visitors, mock battling, accompanying diplomats on visits to other lands. But there are no other lands to visit since the destruction, and so there’s no real role for them either.” Will there ever be, he wonders?
He wishes for the ability of foresight, to know what the future will bring. Will Hyaline return? Will another land rise in its place? The history of Beqanna he’d been told is filled with destructions, but always there has been rebirth at the end of the tale. He knows about the Eclipse, the perpetual darkness that brought Monsters during his parents’ childhood.
Had it lasted this long, he wonders? Had their world gone so still and quiet?
Malik shakes his head abruptly at the direction his thoughts have gone, glancing back at the sanguine mare. Her sunny expression is warmer than the watery orb overhead, and he steps a little closer as they walk as though he might be able to absorb some of it.
Her offer of help is unexpected, but as he meets her brown eyes with his mismatched ones - one blazing orange and the other brilliant pale blue - he believes that she is genuine. Inexplicable, to be sure, so perfectly timed that he wonders if her arrival had not been arranged by Fate.
Though he is not usually so open with strangers, a slow smile begins to appear on his face as they make their final approach to the stream. He stands at the edge, black ears flicked in her direction as she admits that he’s only the second horse she’d met. “You could stay here a while,” he says as he lifts a dark hoof to paw at the water in the pebbled shallows. “This is where most of the survivors live, I think, though some remain in the common lands that didn’t drown.” He pauses for a moment, then continues. “You could help me by keeping an eye out for a sister of mine. Blue, with stripes” - here his shape shifts, transfiguring for a moment into a smaller, paler horse with eyes the opposite of his own, and then once more becomes his black body - “In any shape. Her name is Sickle.”
@Paj Sia
Something about the way she speaks reminds him of the fairies, the certainty of her words paired with his slow comprehension. He chooses instead to focus on what he does understand when he answers: “Things like patrols, or escorting visitors, mock battling, accompanying diplomats on visits to other lands. But there are no other lands to visit since the destruction, and so there’s no real role for them either.” Will there ever be, he wonders?
He wishes for the ability of foresight, to know what the future will bring. Will Hyaline return? Will another land rise in its place? The history of Beqanna he’d been told is filled with destructions, but always there has been rebirth at the end of the tale. He knows about the Eclipse, the perpetual darkness that brought Monsters during his parents’ childhood.
Had it lasted this long, he wonders? Had their world gone so still and quiet?
Malik shakes his head abruptly at the direction his thoughts have gone, glancing back at the sanguine mare. Her sunny expression is warmer than the watery orb overhead, and he steps a little closer as they walk as though he might be able to absorb some of it.
Her offer of help is unexpected, but as he meets her brown eyes with his mismatched ones - one blazing orange and the other brilliant pale blue - he believes that she is genuine. Inexplicable, to be sure, so perfectly timed that he wonders if her arrival had not been arranged by Fate.
Though he is not usually so open with strangers, a slow smile begins to appear on his face as they make their final approach to the stream. He stands at the edge, black ears flicked in her direction as she admits that he’s only the second horse she’d met. “You could stay here a while,” he says as he lifts a dark hoof to paw at the water in the pebbled shallows. “This is where most of the survivors live, I think, though some remain in the common lands that didn’t drown.” He pauses for a moment, then continues. “You could help me by keeping an eye out for a sister of mine. Blue, with stripes” - here his shape shifts, transfiguring for a moment into a smaller, paler horse with eyes the opposite of his own, and then once more becomes his black body - “In any shape. Her name is Sickle.”
@Paj Sia