As the days passed, Baratheon grew impatient and restless. The dry ground beneath him felt like needles piercing his hooves, the wind relentlessly cut his skin. But the landscape changed as he kept walking, turning the dry ground into grass and he even passed an occasional tree. It encouraged him, and courage was very much needed. The events of the past few months mentally exhausted him. Losing parents is never easy, not for him or any other creature, so why did he feel like he was the only one suffering? Why did it feel like the world kept pushing him down, head first into the ground to never recover again. Baratheon stopped crying during the days. At first he didn't, he cried his heart out. He felt how his heart bled dry, how his body shivered every time he passed a living creature, how he secretly despised every creature who smiled at him. What was there to smile about? What happiness was left in the world? Who needs enemies, when you have friends like he did?

But as the landscape changed, so did he. The dust, the mud, the smell of death, ... He nearly forgot how it felt when he found himself wandering around these woods. Little creeks finally gave him the oppertunity to wash away the dried blood that covered him for far too long. Baratheon felt free for the first time in a very long time, as he didn't only wash away the blood, but his sins as well - For a while. He knew that at night he would wake up shivering and sweating again, crying theres that ran out long ago. But not now. Today was a good day. In this moment, with his four hooves on the ground, he felt awkwardly safe. Baratheon was well aware of this illusion - you are never safe - but he took the time to enjoy it anyway. Such a refreshing feeling.

Other horses crossed him without words and Baratheon let them. There were no words needed right now and there was nothing to say anyway. Instead he crawled into the shadows to let his body rest for the rest of the evening while he enjoyed the pleasure of... Existing.

coward...runner...traitor...weakling...oblivion

The sun was already making his journey through the sky when Baratheon woke up sweaty. His heart raced as if he ran a thousand miles with no intention to stop, ever. But here he was. Lying in the grass like the nothing he was a week ago. "Great..." he muttered as he realised he needed to built himself up again during the day. It was time- and energy consuming, and it was exhausting to the bone. Nobody ever tells you this, but he knew very well that being happy consumes as much energy as being unhappy. It is as frustrating to tell yourself you're happy as it is to tell yourself you're not worth living. So he built himself again that morning. He took every brick he knocked down during the night and started building that wall again.

An hour passed and Baratheon didn't move a hoof. He merely blinked as he wanderd in his own mind, reconnecting the wires of his brain as they should be. "You are brave," he whispered. "Your mistakes do not define you. You are brave. Your mistakes do not define you. You are... HEY YOU, WHO ARE YOU?" he suddenly shouted with his rough voice in the direction of another wanderer. "Tell me?" He asked again. "Where am I? Who are you? What is this place?" All the questions he collected the past day came out like a train bashing everything else aside. Enough of this moping. Enough not-believing-in-yourself. He was ready to discover.

C A T H U N "You are loud." It was a statement perfectly free of judgment, scorn or dislike, unbiased - if perhaps a tad amused. It fell from the lips of the tall young stallion that had passed by on the other side of a cluster of trees, initially intent on ignoring the stranger but quickly abandoning that plan when he was spotted. "Did no one teach you to introduce yourself before asking questions?" A trace of a teasing smile flitted lazily across sooty lips, flighty as a butterfly in a whirlwind - there one second, gone the other. Cathun turned away from the winged steed and returned to his search, eyes trailing over the ground as he slowly took a step this way and that, calmly retracing his steps. "Have you seen a pendant somewhere around here?" he asked, rather absent-minded as he traipsed around, nose close to the ground and the big grullo body zig-zagging around the trees, seeking out a patch of ground that appeared to have been burning not too long ago. "It is a fine stone, red and yellow and shaped like a tear, with a clip on it... I must have dropped it before." Speaking of fire - it flickered in the eyes of the youngster every time he opened his eyes, glowing red-hot in the shadow beneath a ridiculously long, elegant forelock that mingled with the loosely tied together mane. Behind him a similarly excessive tail dragged over the ground, fine as a bridal veil and carried with all the careless elegance of a true diva. It might have appeared ridiculous, if not for the hot embers that crackled and snapped as they fell from the frosted curls - like sparks from burned out charcoal and ash. "Help me find it, stranger. If you do I will answer your questions." Cathun looked up, flaming eyes trailing over to the yelling brute - it was a demand rather than a question, determination and and the calm confidence in his voice granting the words more weight and authority than a barely grown colt ought to possess. An excellent way of conserving energy, if he could say so himself. While Cat had gone through the effort of trekking all the way back to the Threshold from the southern desert to retrieve his missing item, he wanted to spend as little time in this forest as possible. It had a way of creeping him out, the tingling sensation of foreign magic seemed to grow stronger here (or maybe it was just because this was the place where he had experienced the phenomenon first). Irrational, ridiculous even, but he couldn't shake it, nor the feeling of being watched. Too many horses traveled through these parts, there were too many tracks on the ground and scents in the air for him to be comfortable. But he wanted his pendant, and while he might not care to admit it to anyone else his spar against the Sultan had made it painfully clear that the son of the Silverthorn was in need of exercise. Stamina, building muscle, honing every part of the body - it was the job of a warrior, and as shitty, dirty and sweatily bothersome as it might be, he craved the recognition that without fail came to any successful soldier. As for the price... Nothing in this world was free, and he was willing to pay if it meant he would be able to live a little longer, a little fiercer, more freely. @[Baratheon]

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"you are loud," Baratheon's eyes glide to those of the stranger. "Did no one teach you to introduce yourself before asking questions?" He sniggered. "I could return that question back to you, you know.." However, the stranger was right. A small moment of silence fell and it was heavily present. "Have you seen a pendant somewhere around here?" The stallion in front of Baratheon sniffed his way through the grass like a dog he once saw. It was a beautiful stray female dog with blue eyes and Baratheon swore he never saw such a be... "It is a fine stone, red and yellow and shaped like a tear, with a clip on it... I must have dropped it before." Rude. The gloomy-eyed stranger was rude to interrupt Baratheon's thoughts and it annoyed Baratheon. Ah, but the stranger didn't know, of course. He didn't know how he wandered the lands all by himself, how the conversations in Baratheon's head became truths. How he made friends out of trees and rocks and the wind and... Those eyes. His eyes. Full of fire and... Baratheon just stared at the stranger blankly. His golden eyes clung to those of Cathun for what could have been minutes, without moving a muscle or flicking an ear.

"Help me find it, stranger. If you do I will answer your questions." and he demanded Baratheon. Cathun demanded Baratheon. "You have a lot of nerves to send me on a quest without telling me who I'm questing for." Baratheon nervously flicked an ear, stamped with a hoof, even lifted an eyebrow there for a second... Every nerve in his body was screaming 'run forest, run. Run forest', but at the same time he was terribly lost and lonely and drained. Even a little desperate.

Truth be told, after demanding Baratheon, the stranger looked a little desperate and lost as well. Maybe not in place, but in his head. Just for a moment. Baratheon had these well-trained eyes that had a great taste for details and he couldn't help it, honestly. He just loves to know 'things'. Everything. He just wanted to suck in all the knowledge he could find and ruminate it over and over again. Why did things happen the way they do? Why did horses do what they do? How does the world look through their eyes? Was it poisoned? Were they hurt? Were they scared, neglected, shamed? Full of life, joy, knowledge, lust for life? "You do need to tell me who you are afterwards, I'm not responsible for the effects when you don't..." This rough and joyful laugh beautified and enlightened the surroundings in just a second and pushed out all his frustrations as if it was a piece of cake, but in his head Baratheon was still trying to get his head around the gloomy look in Cathun's eyes. "Now tell me, m'lady. Which way do I look?" Oh, did I tell you he loves to mock?