Kianzo

Stars hide your fires. Let not light see my black and deep desires.

Kiada had left him—for some little mutated shrew. It was surprising the depth of the dark emotions that coursed in on as young as the princeling. He was just barely weaning off his dam’s teat, and already he harbored a hatred for the hog-faced cow that stole his sister’s attention and presence from him. So, resolute in his odium, the gilded colt set his lanky strides east, away from home and towards independence.

Or so he thought.

Instead of the universe rewarding his autonomy with a clear mind, he found that he only missed Kiada’s company more in his loneliness. A soft sigh slipped out his foal-whiskered nostrils, though it was cut short as his yet unnamed companion sharpened cub-teeth landed squarely on his back fetlock. A squeal ripped from his chest as he instinctively kicked out towards his young striped hyena companion, but the small bitch was too quick even in her youth. Blood welled, bright and scarlet against his black skin, where she had nipped him. She was bored, and this jealousy that sparked from her princeling colt confused her adolescent mind.

His ears pinned, small head swinging around to glare at the companion who now gleefully bounded ahed of him, her eerie (if young) laugh filling the warm mountainous cliffs they travelled. A thin layer of salt spray had dulled her golden and black striped hide, but his own gold was much brighter and hard to dull by the briny breeze.

And, without warning, the cub disappeared over the edge— and the colt felt his first spike of true fear pierce his chest, “Wait!” His coltish voice, too full of command for one s young, struck into the whipping winds. Knobby legs bounded after the cub, following her wayward descent down the precarious incline with reckless and breakneck speed.

He came to stop at the rocky shore, looking up to find his companion yowling and laughing at the sea. But it wasn’t just the sea, there was someone in the violent, turbulent surf—a man was yelling. Even Kianzo, with all his youthful brazen arrogance, would not try such crashing waves and currents. Intrigued, the colt came to stand alongside his rebellious companion, black rimmed ears tilting forward as he watched the stallion slowly beat against the tides; some dark eagerness blossomed in his chest as the dark faced stallion faltered, appeared to have failed and beginning to succumb to the ocean.

But his blue eyes widened as the two-horned man began to gain on the shoreline, slowly emerging, bedraggled, from the sea’s salty and lethal embrace. His cub silenced, also watching him with dark blue and wide eyes. The young pair tracked him to the tide pool and boulders where the stallion wearily walked to.

Ears perked and youthful head cocked, his bold voice struck into the tide pool’s small space, “Why’d you go into the ocean?” And the cub, wet and black nose sniffing, edged towards the small pool, bright eyes closely eyeing the blood that leaked from the cut on the man’s leg.