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03-27-2016, 06:03 PM
| 'Hungry?' The raven stares at him from its perch high in a snow-dusted fir. Tunguska stares back. 'Hungry?' The raven says again. Its mimicry is perfect, but it only knows one word. For the past hour, it's been following him through these woods, croaking, 'Hungry? Hungry? Hungry?' every time he stops to smell something or listen. Tunguska shivers. Not from cold. From a rising fury that shakes his muscles like a fever. In desperation, he breaks into a trot, then a gallop, veering through the trees in an attempt to put the creature behind him for good. A burst of wings in the canopy tells him it's no use. The stallion skids to a halt, wheels, as though to face an enemy, but there's nothing. Only silence, a thicket of frosted green. Until - 'Hungry?' "Fuck you," Tunguska seethes as the black bird bounces into view on a spruce bough, lower than before but still frustratingly out of reach. He considers lunging anyway. The considerable muscles in his haunches bundle; his hooves dance almost daintily, his body is so tightly coiled. The raven wings to a different roost, much higher, and makes a garbled sound. For the hundredth time, it seems, Tunguska turns and stalks away. Stray tendrils of his forelock fall unchecked in his face. With ears pinned and lips twitching clear of his teeth, he looks ready to throw himself screaming into a fight. Not an appropriate response to a bird. Not appropriate from him, especially - he is not supposed to lose control like this. Once, he could have leashed himself in an instant, taken his rage fully in teeth and either done something with it or put it away. Now, it's all he can do to walk, not bolt and buck and kick. The Frostfall-hardened ground crunches beneath his hooves and he hates the noise. He lashes a silvery flank with his tail, snorts white vapor into the frigid air. There are things he wishes he did not remember. Mostly those which, in retrospect, suggest occult patterns beneath the surface of his life. In vanished days, when the empire stood, the warlord came to them, his Nonpareils, to cultivate loyalty, to learn about the herds, to give them a face they could think of when their orders came. What were the people saying? Deos, the old god, blessed the land no more. "He's angry with you," Someone said, bold enough to tease. "Deos didn't choose me, I ate him," The warlord replied, grinning. "You start letting a god choose the kings, sooner or later, somebody is going to think the holy anointment's been given to someone else. If they want their god back, they can cut him from my belly." Even years later, the claim was a mirage in Tunguska's understanding of the world. It was in everything, everything... It seems a mark of sanity to believe what you see, but in the days since he left his homeland, Tunguska has seen things that defy his explanation, that contradict all laws he was ever taught about nature; things that turn his best understanding into shifting sand. And the raven, mouthpiece of Deos, ghost of a dead cosmology - that's the very last thing he needs right now. Dimly, he registers the smell of horses. He hasn't seen any yet. A nearby stream runs freely despite the cold. Tunguska makes his way to it, his big, rolling gait still springy with tension, and his mouth is so tense and shaking he has to bare his teeth and stretch his jaw before he can take a proper sip. His pale grey eyes give him a staring, loath expression, glowing from the sooty shadowing of his face. He closes them. Thinks only of the icy water biting all the way from his tongue to his stomach. His silver grullo hide twitches once, twice, stills. 'Fuck you,' The raven crows from somewhere in the trees. Nerves crackle, his head snaps up, and he lets out a peal of helpless rage. |
of course when I go to write him I HAVE NOTHING BUT TROUBLE ;-;
please tag in all posts // force permitted barring permanent injury or death.
