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08-08-2016, 02:36 PM
If the forest was a dream the first time, what is it now? Caught in its death throes, the sweltering season kisses deep bruises into a swollen sky. No sunlight anymore; just the the false twilight of an impending storm, the teasing scent of rain hanging pregnant in the clouds above, and the strange hush of anticipation. When last Hé witnessed lightning, when last rain lashed his flanks in a misguided attempt at teaching him humility, he had been at the top of a mountain a hundred worlds away from the Threshold. Remembering, he still tastes the water on his lips, and the music of his own laughter. The freckled stallion skips between the trees, his rhythmic gait not quite a trot. Every now and then, dark eyes flash skyward again, praying in silence for the first tongues of lightning, the celestial voice of thunder and the downpour, the curtains of rain to sweep this sticky heat away. Teasingly, the clouds keep their secrets locked above, and so Hé surveys the forest around him with a little less open curiosity. He's been here before — twice, in fact. The third trip robs the trees of mystery, and Hé thinks of everything he is yet to see in the Helovia's other lands. He travels deeper, though, rather than turning around. He isn't in the forest for its trees, after all. He's paused to leap to the top of a gnarled route in his path when he glimpses it: color between the trees ahead. She's a deer at first, a flash of pale hair, something not-quite-real and out of place with the mundane hue of bark at her back, the ceiling of needles crowding out the shades of the impending storm. Hé pauses atop the tree root and his ears snap forward to the sound of her voice. And she isn't lightning, but he leaps down to greet her anyway. "Not to worry, it's only me!" And he's not exactly imposing, a short and short-coupled creature with mud on his legs and knots in his tail. The lost prince possesses none of his formal splendor and only a hint of his bearing, though he carries himself with more poise than a vagabond should possess. "I'm called Hé. Seems I'm the first to welcome you to Helovia." It's not entirely sincere, the way he bows his head, but it's not mocking either. "So, welcome! May I have your name?" |
@Manon would you like to be tagged?
