the Rift


Of Men and Angels [open]

Noitcerru Posts: 5
Outcast
Stallion :: Pegasus :: 16.2 :: 4
Jessica
#3
Noitcerru
Where he had come from didn't matter and where he was going was tomorrow's concern. For now the birdman looks only for relief from the earthen prison he finds himself in with its barbed wire of branches and snaring tree limbs. The very rustle of the leaves is unnatural, the creak of bark prompting the relentless grinding of teeth. Skewbald fur crawls and he tosses his head, an unkept mane flapping against the column of his throat. It is too warm, too cold, too low....

And yet the wide expanse of the blue vault above is just about visible through the canopy. His home, the only home he has ever known - so close but yet so far, its vastness reduced to mere shards of blue amid wood he longs to snap and break apart. Hot breath is expelled in a snort, feathers rustling as he turns (no, drags, begs) his eyes away from the skies. The clouds cannot help him, nor can the stars.


He is alone.


He is not trapped, he decides (and what he decides surely had to be). It takes more to tie down the man and leave him wrestling against his bonds like any of the feathered with whom he shared the skies. He has watched them, flown with them. They are nothing but hive minds, foolish and stupid. What one bird would do another would in a heartbeat until the flock twisted and turned around him - to their deaths or otherwise. He is never so mindless. He will not become trapped like them, will never...


His heart races and he tosses his head again, weak limbs trembling beneath him. There is no relief from the labyrinth of bark and branch and twig and vine that he can see. Only forest, and wood, and glade, and path, and isolation and the rise of a wash of panic in his chest that clamps around his heart like a vice. But he is silent, not a word passing his lips.


And yet he is no longer alone. The birdman's attention snaps at once to the woman coming from the foliage. Sharp birdlike eyes glints in the half light, surveying her in quick razor glances. An assessment - but not of lust. But one never so gilded with any intellectual pursuits, either. It is neither, instead a wary, primal search for threats...and something else, too. Before him is a landed. A wingless. A not-like-him, a hoofed - and so close, closer than the ones he saw several months ago. Close, now, and fascinating. Muscular, solidly built, different. Different, and strange, and dangerous.


But yet he finds no threat in her gaze, in the movement of her body. Nonetheless he stays where he is - suspended high above by the steady drumbeat of pinions, useless legs hanging below. His head cocks in questioning. "Where is the Basin, Wessex-from-the-Basin?" His tones are flavoured with foreign lilts, winding and meandering as if following a river's course from high above down waves and rapids. But it is coarse, too; rough with frustration and a longing for water he gave up on finding hours ago. Yet his eyes are following her closely, his memory working to preserve every glimpse of that which is strange to him - the bare shoulders, barren of feathers, the four hooves affixed to the earth, limbs that worked. The birdman's wings beat rhythmically, the pounding of a war drum mixed with the cadence of a voice twisting through syllables. "Where is anything with open sky? Sky?"  He repeats his words, as if she is stupid, but he believes himself clearly not; the skewbald remains shrewd and watchful.  


_________________

Thank you for the welcome @Wessex!

run boy run
Image Credit


Messages In This Thread
Of Men and Angels [open] - by Noitcerru - 04-04-2017, 12:09 PM
RE: Of Men and Angels [open] - by Wessex - 04-04-2017, 01:37 PM
RE: Of Men and Angels [open] - by Noitcerru - 04-04-2017, 05:39 PM
RE: Of Men and Angels [open] - by Pippigrin - 04-04-2017, 06:03 PM
RE: Of Men and Angels [open] - by Wessex - 04-05-2017, 11:15 AM
RE: Of Men and Angels [open] - by Noitcerru - 04-05-2017, 03:24 PM
RE: Of Men and Angels [open] - by Pippigrin - 04-08-2017, 02:11 AM
RE: Of Men and Angels [open] - by Wessex - 04-15-2017, 10:22 AM
RE: Of Men and Angels [open] - by Noitcerru - 04-15-2017, 06:11 PM
RE: Of Men and Angels [open] - by Pippigrin - 04-17-2017, 07:14 AM
RE: Of Men and Angels [open] - by Noitcerru - 04-20-2017, 04:49 PM

Forum Jump:


RPGfix Equi-venture