He stood just outside the rotunda, the light flickering from the candles above drifting across his chocolate and ivory pelt in dreamy ripples as he observes a set of markings before him. The stallion himself is still as stone, lingering while he ponders on the shape of the moon that stands at the top of the ceiling, and all the markings that come below it.

It seems like a story in some way, and he tries reading it although he doesn’t know any of the words, as if by studying the artisan’s lines he can simply see the film of the past played out before him. He knows it isn’t so, but the symbols themselves, while crude, are incredibly interesting and beautiful in their own way.

After all, there wasn’t much to do around here besides wait around for something to happen.

He held an ear on the entrance to the cavern, waiting for the sounds of any warriors or potential saviors dragging in another one of the infected for a quick bath. He’d seen it happen once or twice, hanging around in this room; after all, many of the kingdoms inhabitants had fallen to the disease, and from his experience with the blue mare and the hybrid foal and their friends, there were many who sought to rescue them from their fate.

He was not one of these. The only mission he had taken had been taken for Kahlua (perhaps the Edge, as well) and a twisted sense of redemption through valorous action; it had not been worth what he had thought it would be.

The aftermath of it all has left him feeling much more inclined to discuss the situation with anyone in the world who seemed they would listen and offer good advice on how to simply feel better about what he had done. He hadn’t seen Mirage, which was perhaps a good thing; he is of the opinion that her knowing gaze would see the guilt on him if she was presented his face in a one on one situation.

There was something about the dragon within her, the undying soul of the great golden creature; she knew more than she should, or at least seemed to. It was part of the woman’s character that had quickly endeared him to the Dragonheart, and won her his loyalty despised the hard truths she had presented him with about life and this land.

For some reason, it seems the story he is staring at should have something to do with Mirage, or at least the forest in which she had made her home. The mare was obviously in great favor of the Goddess, even tinted a shade of the evening; he had seen the gift that had been given her, the band that brought the stars and darkness in her wake. Mirage was Queen of the Dragons, keeper of the misty wood; she was as much the Edge as the sea or the ancient trees that housed her children, and it inspired him to become a child of the Moon as she had.

The only problem was that he didn’t know much about the night bringer, or her gifts; his people had been of the Earth, wielders of stone and nature, not the cold wind of the lonesome eve.

But he could understand it, at least after all he’d been through so far, and the story made it all that much easier to slip into the dream that one day he might belong among them, rather than linger along the outside.

[ Set before the Edge has gone back up to the surface for the sake of my sanity. <3 ]

@[Oberon], @[Voodoo]