_{Some say you're trouble, boy Just because you like to destroy All the things that bring the idiots joy} Well, what's wrong with a little destruction?

Reginald senses the flower child’s approach, though he does not know it. The air grows thick with the aroma of blooms and blossoms, showers of petals and swaths of flower beds. His mind is still somewhat feverish from the blaze of his day-time visions; behind his eyes the pictures dance, beckoned by the vista of the color-laced meadow, and he attributes the burst of fragrance to the mystical nature of this domain. He doesn’t know this place like he knows his home; everything is new and interesting, an unknown quantity. He gazes on, his steps high and careful, his tail lashing the mountain-crisp air in the intensity of his attentiveness.

But then she speaks, and Reginald recognizes the mouse’s yelp. His eyes lift and he sees the fairy child, his head held haughtily as he appraises her presence with a cool eye. He gazes for a few moments; he notices how her pale coat is skewed by the absence of snow and blue ice, how the blush of petals now play upon its surface in subtle clouds of flushed brilliance. Only when she is thoroughly scrutinized does he deign to speak. “Me,” he responds, an arrogant agreement. The leer is hinted by the subtle curve of his lip, the wrinkle in the bridge of his face; then he turns away, and her presence is ignored.

He walks on aimlessly, head dipped downward into the thick, opulent field, the fragrances tickling his nose, the encounters being filed away into his brain to be kept for later scrutiny. He spies the dens and burrows of several lesser creatures: a rabbit’s hole, the burrow of a family of mice, a depression in the vegetation where scattered eggshells lay. The darkling colt collapses them, stomping dust and debris into the minor homes of squealing little creatures. He does not know why he does this; the destruction is aimless, but it interests him vaguely, and so, while the heavy aroma of blossoms continue to waft in the meadow’s slight breeze, he indulges on the tiniest of his whims, distracting himself from the idle thought of his missing brother, the intrusion of the pale little princess.

His fidgeting fails. He straightens up, turns abruptly to face the spindle-legged girl. “Why are you here?” he rasps with an inquisitive lilt, his words no more than paper-thin specters fluttering from his mouth. His eyes are hard, cunning things as they dart about from place to place, but they always are; his curiosity is genuine, his question sincere. The ghost of fear and the intruding cold of the frozen fields are absent from this place; he is free to be interested, and she is an interesting thing beneath her infuriating fillyness, her laughable conceit. Why do flowers grow in her wake? Why should she haunt the north, where flowers do not grow? Who is the Reaper? Is she following me?


@[Lothíriel]

"talk talk talk"