Яikyn

Winter sure was taking forever.
 
The brief period of time in which it seemed that Birdsong was coming had dwindled back into snow and grey overcast, a thought which currently holds my eyes up in the heavens, rather than in the world around me (plain, white, boring).  Maybe it was a lack of years on my behalf, but something seemed odd about the sudden stilling of life, the return of stillness.
 
Even the few birds that had come here from their warm hiding places had left again, their songs ringing in my memory like a joke, the punch line with held.
 
Maybe others wouldn’t notice such things as birds, but I did.  For some reason, I looked forward to the return of the less snow hardy species as much as I looked forward to anything, and I noticed their brief return and sudden absence quite clearly.  Such is the thought that furrows my brows as I stand in the ruddy light of the strange red forest, the place where I had felled a God alongside my brother.  Such is the seed which blooms into a dark worry, one that sets my hooves to moving, the direction of my path diverted from North – a pull to see Erebos having lured me here, where I am now, forgotten in the motion – hooves steadily taking me towards the Veins, my questions in tow.
 
It’s on this path that my right fore clinks against something solid, metallic, my eyes widening in interest as quite suddenly I’ve stopped to inspect the noises.  Metal is a part of my soul, the smell and sight reminiscent of helping father with his trinkets, of mother’s golden glimmer and my sire’s bronze details.  It makes me think of the Sentinels, of home, of security.  I like metal.  So, the metal object, like my mirror before it, draws my full attention like a moth to a flame.
 
Kicking at the snow, then the still red leaves of the past Tallsun, the dried, crumbling black brown of older seasons past, I discover a dirty black rope, the shine of bronze (the word distinctly picked from father’s repertoire of terminology by its ruddy shine, its green tarnish in the etchings along its otherwise shining, smooth face); my golden hooves dig deeper, faster, drawing up from the cold belly of the earth a collection of bones, bones that had been a leg, bones that lead into the strange vertebrate of the neck, to a head.  It’s only one leg, a shoulder, the neck and crown, some ribs and vertebrate scattered along behind, as if an after thought; the edges of the bones are frayed, as if shattered.
 
I think of the Bear, its powerful claws, icy jaws snapping like stone severed from the side of a mountain, somehow just knowing that the being at my hooves met such a fate.  This is a Riftian, too old to be one of ours, the Helovian people who felled the monster summoned though the fabric of existence by a God who proved more worthy of the land. 
 
The impulse to shudder, to pull away, is swallowed down, hard, my nose lowering to test how the rope attaches the armor to the skeletal remains.  Its just death, I tell myself.  This being is no different than I will be when my light is extinguished, and the flesh is all rotted out, besides – the smooth white of bone is all that remains, the harness of black rope strangely unblemished but for the stains of earth (surely water will take it out?) still attached to the severed shoulder of the beast.  Besides, I’ve only found the remains to have the treasure it wears, so obviously given to me by some ancient kin or another, watching from the Starpool – or so says the dreamer within me, the boy who clings to the notion of guardian spirits.
 
The black earth is a scar in the pristine snow cover of the forest floor, that same blackness coating the skull of the creature as I begin to tug at the harness, working the bronze plate free.  When the harness and armor break free, the shudder of the skeleton meeting with the ground knocks earthen debris from the features of the skull, revealing the stubby remnants of what had been a horn.  The glint of bronze there, along the base of the long dead unicorn’s horn, draws my eyes from the armor, to a pretty band of etched bronze, detailed with gold.  Stepping over to look more closely at it, the same allure that had drawn me to my mirror itches, scratches, drives me into the motions of obtaining it as my own.  There are words etched into it, runes, similar to those lining the horns of my Uncle Torleik, the same sort of markings lining the plate of bronze, now that I look from one to the other.
 
Grasping it with my teeth, my tongue pulled as far back into my mouth as I can make it, I slip the band free.  Pondering for a second now how to best move both things to the red water nearby, I drop the horn ring, slipping the tip of my blade through it gently for transport, teeth grasping the harness to trot happily towards the water.
 
[ OOC: Walking through the Blood Forest on his way to bother the Time God when oh look shiny stuff! :o  Feel free to PP him cleaning them up in the creek a bit when you come in or however you’d like to go about Z entering the scene. <3  =]

there's no place to hide down here