.svg/2000px-Google_Chrome_icon_(2011).svg.png){kind=icon}
If he were not hoping he might have missed it altogether. As the crowd at the Giving Tree disperses, Caneo's gaze sweeps once more across the field of bodies. He ought hope for nothing - history taught him that much - but ever a greedy and foolish child, Caneo searches one last time. Vague flickers of recognition synapse through his brain at the sight of certain faces, certain bodies, but all those he ignores. The press of strangers and half strangers means no more to him than a flock of birds. He drifts quietly, looking as he once looked at the stars. Please. If ever he has known a home... Just as the last stragglers clear, just as he prepares to turn away for good and pick up another trail, he glimpses something. A spark like pain beats once through his heart and he stills, rooted, pale eyes keening into the distance as the speck of fire disappears. But he follows. He cannot say for sure who. Time has changed him and it will have changed his former friends, if they still live, but Caneo has survived on thinner hopes before. He moves like a ghost, his long gait swallowing the distance, though at a glance he appears unhurried. His cloven hooves leave snow and wonder far behind, carrying him to the Thistle Meadow at midday, Orangemoon painting a hint of frost into the air. He remembers he last saw this place at night. He stops. Surely it was not a dream. The movement of his eyes grows plaintive; tail whipping, Caneo ups his long walk to a hard trot, jostling and full of pent up energy. He wants now, and he cannot be denied; to allow that irks him. He is not a child any longer, to cry and accept and move on. He has come back - he has come back... The stallion's voice rings out, a sharp silver note, wordless and aching and sharp. He rarely calls, and yet now his voice shatters what little peace remains. Caneo keeps moving, his head swinging, his body a compressed spring, ready to bolt. Now it isn't fear thrumming in him but something else, and he longs to run, but he isn't sure where. And then - He spies it again: something orange in the distance. And it can't be anyone else but who he wants it to be, because his mind is made up: she is real, she is alive, he has not returned to make again a new life with nothing to lean on from before. And her name breaks from his lips in a shout, maybe the best evidence of how time has changed him, made him bold, made him himself and no longer a pale mirror to reflect the world. "TANDAVI!" Please be her. It must be her. He is already moving toward it.  |
@Tandavi
* violence & magic use always permitted *
Do not tag Caneo unless you are starting a new thread you would like me to see! Thank you!
