Albrecht

Others file in, chirping greetings and introductions as they come. The black stands quiet, committing each name and rank to memory. He’s unsure what several of them mean (Haruspex? Time Mender??), but Lord he has no doubt of. Nor does he doubt the patriarchs impending disapproval of his actions. Tall-Dark-and-Uncivilized just doesn’t seem like the type to pull his punches, age and fragility be damned.

This sudden surge of motivation, heavily steeped in self-preservation, prods the old stallion to greater effort. He reaches quickly into the pile of supplies and emerges with a few tines of berries pinched between his yellowing teeth. One ear creeps forward in tentative obeisance as he holds them prominently between himself and the muscular king. Just look at me participating and shit, his puckered expression and lowered head suggest. The guy looks like he spends every waking minute dragging logs and sprinting courses for fucks sake. There's no telling what he could do to a spindly old bastard like Albrecht.

Visions of copper hair hanging ominously from a bloodied horn usher the black outside. He sidles along the perimeter of the tent until both the entrance and the young boy working feverishly at the back are out of sight, then stops to stare unhappily at the blank canvas spread in front of him. He has nothing that he wishes to remember and certainly nothing that he wants to lay down in print for others to see, but he's resigned to paint something, anything, so he dabs a spot of blue gel onto the white of the tent with his upper lip.

A red blotch follows, then a purple and a yellow. He mixes some yellow and blue gel to make a crude green and smears an undulating line across the tent beneath his other marks. The little blobs of color look like horses to him, bobbing on a sea of green goo. He uses the rim of one nostril to smear tiny lines pointing downward from each blob; little legs to carry his horses across their green hills. He adds little dots of color as neck-less heads and smears a stubby set of horns from their tops.

The little blobs are unicorns now, galloping all in a line over bright green grass. Names slink unbidden from the stallion’s mind, christening each member of the painting with a shattered memory. A chestnut filly, her tiny ears always forward and soft eyes laughing. Ellieanna. The brothers blue- and purple- roan. Fendrel and Favian. A palomino colt, bright as the sun and twice as warm. Nethanial.

Pain lances through the stallion’s chest, sharp as any lordly horn. He staggers backward, blinking hard, but the little faces won’t dissipate and the white of the canvas crowds them in from all directions no matter how hard they run. "Fucking stupid ass idea, painting a fucking tent.” He whirls away, knocking the berry branches aside and sweeping the tuft of his tail over the canvas as he turns, but the colors have set, sunk into the white fabric, and refuse to be smudged.

He scrubs his muzzle against his knees, seemingly desperate to remove the paint, stifling a heavy sniff as he does.


//

OOC: Awww... :(

The Curmudgeon