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Maybe she was a dupe for even toying with the idea that she could offer to the expert stallion a challenge. The weight of the brewing storm clouds above quickly suffocated the evenings dull light and Africa found that her eyes were straining closer in order to decipher the blend of black paint and shadow sliding just as fast as each other before the grim hue of the thrashing ocean. It was a fool’s hope that compelled her to continue, and a blunt desire to please the stallion whose cause she served so devotedly.
His voice rattled through her ears again and again, mixing with the steady crash of windswept waves and rolling thunder- ‘Let’s see your skills then’ and her face flushed hot with embarrassment as her scrabbling attack met naught but waterlogged sand. Knees that she had stiffened to worsen the effect of the attack jarred beneath the press of her forward tilted weight; the drenched sand where he had been not so forgiving, and pain she had not been well prepared for ricocheted through the knobbly joints.
Perhaps for the heart of a soldier, such sport as sparring was stress-relieving and enjoyable, but Africa found her confidence melting away into the violet strike of another lightning fork.
Her long skull lifted, the expression across her features both bewildered and disheartened, and her humble eyes searched for the stallion who had danced meticulously to his left, away and out of reach of her failing assault. Surprise engulfed her as bared teeth were thrust down towards her right cannon in the same fleeting moment of his escape, and she balked to her left abruptly without enough speed- the curse of a well-crafted, though heavy frame.
His snapping teeth grazed the left-behind-leg as she inelegantly flung herself left and away from his lowered face, bruising the unpadded bone there easily. The tender-hearted mare held her breath; his skill far outweighed her ability to predict his technique. Weight falling across splayed forelegs into the yielding sand beyond the waterline, Africa’s lax reflexes failed to remove her behind from the brunt of his skilful buck-like manoeuvrer before he should have sailed on away. His lunging limb ploughs into the right curve of her rib-barred barrel and the wind for a second is forced from her lungs as a result of the powerful impact. The wing was out of reach having already opened in a vain, though instinctive attempt to manage some balance.
Already tipped forward across her forelegs, the one-winged mare’s own hind-legs sailed out behind her to kick at the stallion’s moving mass squarely, before he was out of her reach entirely.
Again thunder bellowed through the heavens, rising ferociously above the throbbing pulse in her ears. Africa had not the time to hesitate, her back hooves were sinking again into the cushion of the soaked sand and she burst forward, lone wing still lifted at half-mast to the right of her rocking back. With a limber frame curling around so that searching eyes could monitor Midas’s next move, Africa broke into a choppy, checked canter to close any distance he hoped to gain. Already she was tiring.
Words: 527
Attack: (2,3)
Defense: (0,1)
HP: 33.5 / 47
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[JUDGED] Storms gathering (Africa//Spar)
