As strong as the seas are stormy.</style>
The she-wolf had lingered on the beach after her plotting with the delirious, troublesome Oxy. It was a massive land with sprawling sands as far as her eyes could see, disappearing into a hot horizon made indiscernible by the rays of the sun. It swam before her gaze, and more often than not made her squeamish and sick to look upon it. Hotaru preferred the midnight hours, the ones that played moonlight upon her delicate frame and heralded blissful cold. Though it often reminded her deeply of…well…Phaedra.
Hotaru had always lived her life condemning love, relationships. What good had they ever done her? Her twin had put her through hell, her mother just as uncaring and absent as Tolio in Hotaru’s life. All she’d had as a filly was a distant shadow, a winged shape in the sky that kept her from too much trouble and danger. Phaedra had done nothing for Hotaru but pass on her blood, her lineage. It made Hotaru so profoundly sick that sometimes she would leave her cavern just to scream abuse at the sky. Sometimes she hoped Phaedra would hear her, from beyond. Other times, she slunk back to Arya’s warm, forgiving side, penance on her tongue for a mare long dead and undeserving of her blasphemy.
For so long her only guiding light had been the moon. It was her goddess who had seen the potential in Hotaru, the one shamefully given to her by Phaedra, and had become a model for the young rose to take after. The thief had bloomed beneath the idea that she could be something, and she had. Hotaru had taken her small, insignificant life and she’d made something out of it.
And then…and then her goddess, in whom she’d believed so faithfully, had killed her parents. Oh of course, it wasn’t the celestial herself, but in the end what was the difference? Hotaru had wondered incessantly whether she should hate or revere the immortal. Then, like a thief she could never hope to be, emotions had begun to batter past the frigid unfeeling plains of her psyche. And in the darkest hours of her life, she realized that any hatred she’d held for the mare that had borne her was laced in the horrible, gut-wrenching realization that all Hotaru had ever wanted was the love and pride that Phaedra had given so freely to Raeden. It was then that the disease began to fester, and try as she might to evade it, Hotaru began to fall prey to something as petty as hatred. How could she hate her Goddess for killing parents she’d never known, much less loved? And yet she did…oh how she did.
Despair coils tight under her skin, feeling as if she’s been forced into a body two sizes too small for the breadth of her foreign emotions. It fights for freedom, howling at the moon that taunts it from the sky, washing over her skin in what used to be such a comforting manner. Below lay the memories of Arya’s near-death, Raeru’s discovery, finding out Oxy was the reason she’d been orphaned. All of it bottled up and shoved away into the back of her mind. Hotaru’s job called for an emotionless state, a certain diligence and perseverance. Hotaru hadn’t realized until it was too late that all the bottles had broken, and her stomach clenched with the screaming desire to rend and tear, cry until her eyes were sore and her soul cleansed.
So when a familiar bellow echoed over the sands, drudging up that same bitter hatred for leaving her adopted daughter orphaned in the wake of her herd sister’s murder, Hotaru responded.
It was in a wordless way, but she raced down the beach without a single care for how it would tire her during the fight. She was emotional and conflicted, drowning beneath the weight of turbulent emotions she’d always taken care to never experience. Sand kicked out from her racing hooves as Hotaru streaked down the beach, Oxy only visible by the shape he cut out against the backdrop of the moonlit water. As she charged down towards the water, approaching from behind him, a furious scream ripped out of her throat. A challenge meant for stallions of olde, but one she stole from them to make into her pedestal. She entertained the idea of spearing him in the side, letting him choke on his own poisonous blood, but he was useful to her. For now.
Instead, she used her desperation to fuel her reckless run towards him, head tucked towards her chest, brandishing her wicked horn. Hotaru leapt for him like a wildcat, using the sturdier sands below to launch herself forward, horn pointed at his left flank. He the embodiment of all her failures, her sufferings.
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Notes: Teaching Spar
Tag: Oxy
Word Count: {800/800}
Attack: {1/3}
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i'll take a hamburger; hold the lawsuit [Hotaru]
