of recoil and grace

[OPEN] of recoil and grace

Eldala Posts: 64

Outcast atk: 5 | def: 9 | dam: 5.5

Mare :: Unicorn :: 14.0 hh :: 3yrs (Ages in Frostfall) HP: 63 | Buff: NOVICE

Capro :: Girgentana Goat :: None Goatfairy

12-30-2016, 11:02 PM (This post was last modified: 12-30-2016, 11:05 PM by Eldala.)

ELDALA awoke to noise, commotion. It was not loud or joyous. It was quiet. It felt sad. She could feel the Capro's confusion as he stared out of their cave with his head tilted towards what he saw. The terrene mare yawned, puffing out fog. Her head thrust out of her cave, without care, and into the cold dawn of a new age she didn't yet know had come

Her life had been so full as of late. Finding out that her brother was alive and well, meeting so many new horses and handsome stallions, and even picking up Capro: Deimos had enabled it all. Now though, as she looks out, the mare feels all the carefree warmth that had been building in her soul flicker out with the burning chill of a tundra breeze. Her hooves scramble against the rocky ground of her cave as she stumbles towards what had stolen her joy. She moves slowly, watching as others show up and recede. She watches Johnny run away, she watches the antlered one speaking to General Erebos, but she doesn't want to watch the corpse. Hotaru might have accepted her into the herd but it was the blackened stallion who'd given her wings. She hadn't gotten to speak to him very much. Fuck, she hadn't even gotten to thank him again after he'd given her the Weaver rank. Still, he'd felt like a leader she could put her faith, her love, her allegiance in. Deimos been an idol she worshiped from afar, never bothering him, for fear of upsetting his opinion of her.

And now he was dead.

How had this even happened? He wasn't even old. The grumpy old shit should have gone before one so young as the Reaper. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair that the leader she wasn't afraid of, who'd been kind to her, who had noticed her was gone. Her lower lip quivers against the pain of the rain she's just noticed. How fitting that even the tundra would weep with them. How astonishingly warm an action for the frozen land to realize the loss of such a valued protector. Eldala musters a whimper and only the word "No" before she falls to the ground a ways from him, on the outskirts of the group. The wash of emotions overtake her as an avalanche of mud and snow. Pure grief mixes with the dark selfishness of self pity before the fear of the unknown answer to "What's next?" overtakes them in the slide. In the icy rain it would probably be hard to notice the tears coming down her face but they poured still, undone at the surprise of grief. She might have been having a good time recently but, overall, the mare knew their herd had been struggling. Their massive home had been holding fewer warm bodies each month. Their numbers were too few now. Hotaru had tried to stem the bleeding. Deimos had encouraged them all to work harder in his frustration. The stallion must have been fighting death, even then. She wants to reach out, to touch him, a selfish impulse to soothe her selfish fears.

But she refrains. It wouldn't be right. The sorrow of a loyal subject would never be able to compare to that of a son or friend. Instead she wrenches herself from the wet snow and retrieves a bough of Coldtongue berries from her new plant in her cave. She walks silently back to the group, barely noticing Capro trailing at her side, the numb shock allowing her to only see that Enna was now gone from Erebos' side. She walks to her much-loved leader and drops the berries near his face before moving her nose over to Erebos. Eldala does not speak to him, she doesn't offer him hollow condolences or words that wouldn't do anything to soothe his soul. Instead, she tries to touch him. Her warm nose would rest briefly on his shoulder, a show of solidarity and compassion, before she turns back to the crowd.

"Words"

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Directly interacts with @Erebos