Say the West is a story we made up to erase

Either an undersized draft or an oversized warmblood, the truth of Yves' lineage is some combination of French Trotter, Shire, and Gelderland. He is a black-based dappled gray splattered liberally with Bend-Or spots. His massive head is divided by a thin symmetric stripe, which connects a narrow star between his soft brown eyes to a broad snip that butts up against the edges of his nostrils. Dark pointed and only graying out slowly, he will retain his youthful dappled coat throughout his life; the pattern broken by just one white stocking on his right hind leg. Yves has large cream-colored hooves and a thick mane and tail which starts dark at the roots and gradually fades out toward their ends.

Conestoga wagons left tracks you can see from space

From the Northwest passage to the Great Divide

Studious, sensitive, snarky Yves defines himself as a naturalist. He first began studying plants out of necessity, but the habit has persisted into this less dire stage of his life. While he comes by friends easily, especially among more intellectual crowds, he is a private creature when it comes to his deeper sentiments: a good listener who deftly deflects more probing questions with wit rather than risk genuine vulnerability. Secretly melancholic and self-deprecating, he distracts himself with work and amour. Although his love of botany and science in general rules him above all else, he is an undiscriminating romantic. He is terribly prone to sweet little crushes. They always start innocently enough, but he cannot resist the urge to sabotage himself when things get serious; his life is a cute romantic comedy that never reaches its satisfying resolution. He has drifted into his prime as an eccentric bachelor, in every sense an academic in his blend of cleverness, promiscuity, skepticism, and that small pearl of heavily guarded idealism that persists in his core.

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator: ISTP

Everybody's looking for the other side

I'm still waiting for the whiskey to whisk me away

SIRE: Gaspard, the diplomat - status unknown
DAM: Carressa, full-time mother - presumed deceased

FULL SISTER: Adeliz, elder sister - deceased
FULL BROTHER: Jacques, younger brother - status unknown

MATERNAL HALF SISTER: Ivonne - status unknown
PATERNAL HALF BROTHER: Marcel - status unknown
PATERNAL HALF BROTHER: Dix - status unknown

NEPHEW: Noe, out of Adeliz - status unknown

And I'm still waiting for the ashtray to lead me astray

Betwixt the cul-de-sacs and the one-way signs

Like his family, Yves’ story is a fractured one. He was born before disaster struck his homeland in the rocky foothills of a stark mountain, the second foal of Gaspard, a conspicuously absent diplomat, and Carressa, a mare determined to compensate for her partner’s truancy by being as smotheringly maternal as possible. Those domestic early years of his life were blissfully simple, punctuated by getting into mischief with his older sister Adeliz, the subsequent quarrels with his mother, and rare but uncomfortable explications of their devilry to his father on the few occasions he was home. Later, his younger brother Jacques would be born and grow up to be a warrior. For the few months they co-existed as the family unit of Gaspard and Caressa’s adult offspring, Adeliz and Yves - both clever and successful in their own rights - would never hear the end of, “Why can’t you be more like your baby brother?”

This would be a short-lived trivial frustration for the siblings. Small but undeniable portents of darkness had begun occurring all over the mountain that spring, when Adeliz bore a bastard son to an unknown father. Yves aligned himself with his scorned sister and newborn nephew as they were inevitably exiled, protecting and providing for them as they fled. Three days later, the mountain where they had grown up was engulfed in swift-moving velveteen shadows which raced like lava down to the woods where the outcasts had hidden themselves. Still weak from the ordeal of pregnancy and giving birth, Adeliz never had a chance. Yves was left with a final edict to keep Noe safe, and by some miracle, he did.

Raising an orphan foal is no easy matter for even the most maternal creature in the most idyllic settings. For a grieving uncle in a landscape ravaged by an unknown enemy, it was almost impossible.

Almost.

Yves coped with his heartbreak by flinging himself wholeheartedly into his studies. Whenever the odd pair wasn’t on the move, the unlikely father figure was examining plants: studying their properties to minimize the chances of him poisoning himself or, gods forbid, Noe, grinding medicinal pastes with his hooves, and testing out tinctures to help the weanling-too-soon grow strong. Pursued by the shadows through valleys and woods, they met others fleeing similar fates. The ragtag survivors coalesced into a herd out of necessity. As Noe grew and became more independent, Yves integrated more into the herd’s social life, befriending an awkward but extremely intelligent pegasus stallion who had been a healer and leader before his home’s downfall. They hatched a plan to voyage to Helovia, a land the winged stallion had heard of, but before it came to fruition, disaster found Yves yet again.

The shadows overcame them, scattering the group for good. Yves and Noe were separated in the chaos. Yves desperately scoured that patch of land for months, straying far closer to the shadows than any wise creature would as he searched for his nephew and his best friend. His plant studies became an obsession; his sole distraction and coping mechanism. Winter came slow that year, but it still came, finally forcing him to abandon the search and head for safer, warmer climes. Helovia.

It seemed as good a destination as any, given the circumstances.

I'm going round in circles on the other side

So at night I sit and I watch for stars to stay

They wink and then they're gone down the milky way

But when you're left in the middle of a Midwest sky

Played by Grace.

Everywhere you look is the other side