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Torleik
A lone man loved by none: How long can he live? Torleik cocked his head to the side at her words, not understanding. "My kind?" he asked, his eyes obviously roving to the horn atop her dome and her cloven hooves. "You appear more purely unicorn than I," the stallion pointed out. While Ophelia did not possess the leonine tail, she did have the cloven hooves - both things Torleik lacked. In reality, he looked rather like an equine whom someone had taken pity on and decided they would mount horns upon his head. "Why do you not live in the Basin?" His query was soft, worried that perhaps one of his kind had done something to harm her. It was foolish beyond measure, he knew, but Torleik felt a protectiveness towards this mare, gentle and soft-spoken as she was. Someone like this deserved...so many things even he believed he could not offer, if she even deigned to acknowledge his existence as more than a mere set-piece. Irritated at the weakness of his loneliness, he bludgeoned his errant wants back into the cave in which he held them captive and instead focused on allowing Ophelia's bonded to inspect his horns. If the dragon was bonded to someone like her, surely it was not a dangerous creature unless thoroughly provoked, yes? That was what the rabicano reasoned to keep himself calm in such close proximity to the tiny silver beast. Indulging their wish for knowledge, as he had offered the morsel, he lifted his head once more. "The right says 'water' and the left says 'grave.'" he related. "All males born among my people were expected to learn to fight, and expected to learn how to co-exist with the sea. Water and death were the two constants in our life." Torleik flinched involuntarily as Tinek leapt to the air and took flight, trying to prevent his instinct from pinning his ears back to his skull. He succeeded, but barely: his audits still flared back in displeasure and it took a few moments of walking before Torleik could bring his gaze back down to Ophelia. She moved gracefully and he mused that her muscular nature, coupled with decidedly feminine features, would have been highly prized and regarded as the pinnacle of female beauty had she been a part of his home. Would have had to fend off many suitors bearing many gifts displaying whatever quality they thought best with which to tempt you into marriage, the glacial-eyed stallion mused with a quiet snort. He had never been one of those stallions, chomping at the bit at the cusp of his manhood, ready to claim, bed and impregnate a young, impressionable mare; mold her into the wife he wanted. It was no surprise then, that at a decade of age, he was very much a bachelor. A few of those at home who were less fond of him liked to claim he didn't take a wife because he was impotent, or worse yet, because he fancied other males. That had been highly frowned upon in his home because it was seen as the ultimate in selfishness: their life was hard enough, and to forgo the ability to reproduce and continue the survival of the herd was unacceptable. Such behavioral tangents were, hypocritically, quite tolerated as long as you fathered children. Making a child was all that mattered; whatever else you did was inconsequential in the long run. Pulled from his thoughts by a voice that caressed his ears like a warm, gentle touch, Torleik found himself gazing into her captivatingly strange heterochromatic eyes. Ophelia's question, however, was not as pleasant as her vocals. A strange pressure manifested in the back of his skull, and unaware of what they hybrid mare's mind-reading magic felt like, he had no way of knowing she was in his brain. "They destroyed my home. My family. Everyone," he returned with coldness more bitter than the bite of the Frostbreath Steppe. Memories flooded his mind, unwanted but impossible to resist, bidden to the surface by Ophelia's searching. It was a bleak, foggy morning, the sky flat grey and impossible to pierce with a normal gaze. That was why they'd gotten so far before being seen, why their aerial attack had been so devastatingly successful. Torleik rose with the dawn as he always did, emerged from his hut and checked the fishing lines. They were heavy with the scaled creatures so he hefted the ones that needed to be harvested, spotting his little nephew nearby. He tasked him with gathering the fish and smiled as the little boy's chest puffed out in pride with his adult task. The sleep had barely slipped from his little seaside village when the alarum rang out, but it was too late. The fires had already started. The pegasi had come from high, so high up in the sky, above the low fog, and now they plummeted from the grey expanse like birds of prey hurtling in for the kill. His first thought was to rescue his nearby nephew, and he turned, calling out. It was a mistake. The little boy stopped and Torleik watched in mute horror as a flaming pot smashed into the colt's back, exploding and engulfing the child. He screamed only for a second or two, the fire burning his lungs quickly and offering him a short but painful death. Shock was benevolently kind and numbed the dual-horned stallion, his shattered mind flicking images of family rapidly past his consciousness. His parents. His brother. His aunt and uncle. Solid hooves bore him to the hut his mother and father resided, the structure blazing with those wicked flames already, the roof caving in. He screamed for them, calling their names, disastrous, sinking dread making him sick to his stomach when his mother called back. She ordered him to go, to get out, to take anyone who could make it and run. He could see her through a hole in the hut, her face half-burnt, eye blistered shut. He argued. She remained firm. They both knew he couldn't save her, and his father had already passed, his head nearly cleaved from his neck by a falling, fire-eaten rafter from the ceiling. One last time, she told him to go, that she loved him and he needed to go, and everything in him collapsed. There was no strong warrior who had seen battle after battle and come out alive and victorious. There was no experienced male, well into adulthood, prepared for the viciousness of life. There was only a terrified little boy and the pain and loss of leaving his family behind. And he ran. Torleik's feet had been mechanically carrying him along with his travel-mate, and when the memory stopped, he felt like he was resurfacing from being submerged far too long. The clarity of the present here and now was sweeter than anything he remembered and he clung to it desperately, not wanting to get lost in his mind again. "I...apologize," he murmured, not knowing how long he was silent or if she'd spoken while he'd been trapped in that hell. |
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No man is an island.
Pixel by: Tamme :D
Pixel by: Tamme :D
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