The slender body is quick to dodge; the smaller legs lag behind, unable to beat the earth as Reginald’s hooves are able to. Though maybe the Grey-Eye’d prince’s legs are just that much larger, grown into thick, sturdy boughs of budding strength that pulls him between trees, twixt the bush, over slippery loam that could crack the fragile line of a tendon? A wild abandon grips Reginald as he races ahead of the smaller child; he forgets for a moment that it is a game of chase that he has proposed. He is intoxicated with his running. The wind catches the sparse bristles of mane, the growing, tangling feathers of his hoof, the rough cut edges of his body as it sails through the salty, lovesick air. Is this flight? He falls in love with it; he understands why the dragon flies, and his brother runs beneath of slippery white shadow.

Something tugs at Reginald’s lung. The dormant fury rises in his throat like boiling bile; a token of his childhood resides within his breast, a residue of sickness. He cannot run like this forever, as much as he would love to. He bites back the anger; it slithers from his lips unsteadily—he cannot help himself. “Can you fight?” he calls behind him, his voice buffeted by the speed of their journey, the pump of his chest as it propels him forward.

He stiffens his legs; dirt flies from his hooves as the body brakes oh so suddenly, his rump whipping to the side as Reginald turns unsteadily to face the tiny adversary. He is small, now that Reginald can face him, can see him; he rears, earthen hooves pawing the air, another kind of challenge, another type of game. He does not know what he wants to do with the child; where he cursed with the feminine sex, his focus would have been clear and his humiliated wrath unleashed upon the unlucky soul. This is a comrade in gender, however; there is kinship here, somewhere, in the sweat of their brows, the corded power etched in the bloodline, waiting to bloom into war. The hooves lash out playfully; the male need for competition colors the sweat that stings in Reginald’s eyes. He wants to fight, now. He wants to act before the breath in his lung is taken away—to be replaced, instead, by the shame of his weakened blood, the curse of his birth, the yoke of his frailty. No child such as this will know of Reginald’s secrets; a vault of grey stone conceals all.

[WOW sorry for the wait! D: ]

”Watch for Circe.”