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Crowned head had risen, harks falling back and tasseled tail curled ever meticulously at his hooves, the white train barely brushing the ground. To her he looked down, his pride righted and eyes set still and cold. Given a few more moments some sly comments of tease might come forth. He was as he should be, outside at least. The collar straightened, the wrinkles smoothed from his coat, but the scars were still below, and his mind still rolled over to remember how they felt….how they looked….how they ached.
He has turned to face her, his accusation leaving his lips, his chest inhaling, head rising. He was pulling himself together, for he knew now what was to come. All these intrusive fellows were the same. Kahlua. Hotaru. Ashamin. And all the long list before them. They were the same. Into this world they stepped, into these dark shadows, where his eyes were cast with fears and terrors of another age. And each was the same. He always stepped away. He always spoke no (though maybe not in words they knew). And they always continued, they pushed, they stepped forward. The words always came anyway, pouring forth hot and impassioned. (Perhaps from some place of care and love but not in ways he could understand) Pushing him till he was against the wall and had no choice but to be closer, to face their hot, heated words of what he should do, of who he needed to be, and the questions, god always. Wanting to know. Telling. Lecturing. Wounding more.
All till he could stand it no more and he as well lashed out. Vicious fires of rage which had nothing to do with them, or the name which they bore, lashing out like whips to wound and repeal. To get space. To be alone in the quiet darkness. So often it repeated, and had worked. Each name which had come into his dark corners now would look upon the golden coat with hurt, mistrust, or anger. Each kept away. The glimpse they had seen of what lay below washed away in the blinding hurt or frustration he dealt. Each now gave space in the only way he had known to achieve it.
Yet it was the ritual. It was as it was. There no sense that there could be any different. Call it a punishment for not tending the gold cloth and letting it slip but he expected it, and knew no other alternative. It hadn’t always been so necessary. Before this land he simply moved on and left behind the frustrated glances, and hot tempers. Yet here, in Helovia, where for so long now he had resided, and where so many pulled at him, rosen and the like, it seemed to occur more and more. The world was getting smaller, pushing in. No other way to continue on. As much pain as it held, he needed that. He thought.
Silence. It pressed uneasily in his ears, worming into them with its soft ringing tones, and the softer roar of rain. It seemed so far away now, strange. One hark slides sideways, lifting ever slightly. Then she rises. And she retreats. Cold eyes narrow, but within their depths something shifts, stirring it alive again. No one ever gave space….no one had ever retreated. None, after what they had seen, gave ground. So while his sides let the breath out long and slow, his head tilted in confusion distrust.
When she speaks, it commands. His crowned head rights itself, the tone echoing Ashamin’s defiance… Yet Haldir was ever watchful. Through all he had remained silent. His own mind rolling with the gold’s and twisting in the same sympathy and frustration it always seemed to fall into when the gold fell into such moods. But as he watched the scene, as Rexanna stepped away, his moon eyes had grown more alert, and watchful, noticing something different. So he whispers to the distrusting gold, ”Listen”. And he does.
The defeated tones, the broken syllables were gone, and in their place was a strong voice, layered deep in what he could not even unravel. All the while his distrust build, his resentment of her continued insistence grew, and for a moment it seemed it would still end as these meeting always had. She had yielded space, but she was still here…and…..he….but she began to speak, and he for once, began to listen.
The truth came tumbling from her lips. Pouring forth things he had never even haunted upon. She was, it was sad to admit, right. To him, she was nothing but another piece…nothing more, but then…nothing less either. And she admitted it. She hardly knew him. After so many waltzed before him, swaying with sass their bold statements of knowing him, or of assuming such things (only one had ever asked to know him, and even then those efforts were wasting away, freezing in the north, by his fault and hers). None had ever admitted it…None had ever, from what he had heard, missed him either. None had ever expressed, worry. He had hoped to be needed, for surprise to take some. Deimos’s reaction had been at least a little savory, but there was something deeper here. Something even the gold’s thoughts could not pin down which pressed that notion harder into his chest. Harks twist to bend back, shifting from anger to some frozen thought. While she tumbled through her thoughts, the smooth and prideful held frame was paused, and in such, the illusion slipped.
And then she went on. And he listened. When in other times he begged for them to silence themselves. For them to be done, so he could lash out and free himself from their stares. But this…he actually listened.
Cal’s…..His mind stretches, pulling back to that day in the threshold. It was so long ago. So many ages….since he felt that way. Since he felt in control. Not the madness in which he rampaged through Helovia with weeks before, not the dark and dangerous cretin he had become in the months before that. But that proud secure being, with humor, laughter, and a mind free from ghosts and unwelcomed guests…he missed it.
Then she goes on her words tumbling forth but not pressing him as those of other do. Not shouting, or demanding, not even in comfort pushing, but laying bare all.….The words tumble out, the general proud speech trickling into darker depths, into confessions. And one gold hark lifts, while a freezing shiver rips down his spine, sucking away his breath as she spoke: ‘my first born child….’. “Wh-“ But his breath halts in its raising heights, legs shivering as she spoke about it. How could she-How could she so easily- Perhaps it wasn’t so easily, but yet she had just…Bewilderment was seeping into him as his earth eyes blinked and narrowed-surely he was mistaken and she-
All in the past. We can’t change that. Damn her! How could she be so calm! How could she talk about it as if was normal. As if those words did not have consequences for him….and her. ”Because she’s moved on.” The stag’s quiet voice whispered in gently, mournfully. But he got a hot reply. ”You DON’T move on from that.” It was bitter and laced with sharp edges of resentment. The stag dared to say no more. Yet as soon as he said it the crowned head falls away, this time he lets the silence seep in.
It wasn’t as if he hadn’t tried. He tried to forget their faces. He tried to remove the lump in his throat whenever he went to speak their names. For many moonless nights he had tried to sleep. Yet every moment he closed his eyes he saw the faces haunt him again. The dark truths seep out, the blame resting squarely upon him. If had….If they didn’t….She could have….He tried. Yet he had always awoken alone, and worn. It had seeped into his skin, and the lack of sleep blurred the nights and days, darkening his memory. Those were dark days indeed. How he emerged on the other side was still some miracle. He found himself far from all he knew, and speaking in tongues he had not heard since before. He accepted it, and moved on, and that was how it had been ever since. Perhaps he hadn’t moved on….but he had tried, and he dared not try again.
A small bark from Haldir causes the gold to flinch back to the present. The resent was washed away yet again in the surrender to the truth. So newly pressed upon him it’s force was greater than before and he could not deny it. So when he looks back to the cream mare, with water still trailing down her, it is with some more tender lingering. This was different than other times. She had yielded space, and her words were of confession not accusation…from selfless, unwarranted concern. So it must be understood how strange it was when he looked up to her, with eyes still showing signs of sorting through his thoughts, that he looked to her and stepped towards her.
It was just one step, and he pauses soon after unsure. That had never happened before. His head tucking back again. For so long he had kept the even voiced thoughts so tightly bound within. Refusing to speak of them. Refusing to acknowledge them even within another. Yet, she had said….”Y-you” He seemed to struggle with the thought, as if his mind could not wrap around it. “You lost your child to-?” His lips open to say more. To speak a similarity, a condolence, an apology….something. But his lips had gone dry and his emotions pressed to tight in his throat. So as he stares upon the ground, trapped as he was, he only shivers and asks in a whisper of dull ache- “How?” He had changed her life, (a fact he still had yet to comprehend in all this), now she was changing his.
OOC:: <3
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