I’m walking the halls of my victory, my golden hooves splashing in the red pool that collects at the foot of the falls, savoring the bite of their shape into the soft inlay of my hooves, the remembered cacophony of the fight in which we, my friends and I, alongside warriors of Helovia and the strange kingdom from which this one had been rent, had felled a God.  In all the ways some might avoid remembering the bloodshed and screams of that afternoon (and I might have been one of them, had the day ended differently for me), I will recall it time and time again, and while each time the scent and sounds will fade and blur, today they are bright and shining, and I delight in their recollection.

I am torn from the sound of Erebos’ hooves and the thunder of the approaching colt, nameless, his red dragon wheeling above, torn not by my own desire to notice the reality of the world around me but by the sound of a girlish little voice squealing out a boy’s name in the most ludicrously annoying utterance I’ve ever heard.  My ears flick back and my egotistical stride through the red water stills as I lift my crown and send my molten eyes towards the sound.

The colt that she talks to - named is Abraham, as everyone within a mile now knows - is familiar somehow, making me think of a more purely black creature and tangled, low branches of willows.  It’s not the same colt as the one who raced with me, his legs reaching and promising strength, strength that was stolen by the painful rattling of his breath, but the resemblance is enough to make me think of the dark natured colt I had shared a moment of childhood delight with for the first time in a long while.  He’s about the right age, even, a similarity that is hard to shake until I notice something else.

One ear falls forward, because he has two dragons, and that’s interesting enough to make me instantly not annoyed at the filly or him.  They are surely not the feathered creature’s pets.

The sound of a third voice makes the second ear rise, my golden eyes narrowing to find a young mare who is much more to my liking than the feathered one with the shrill little voice.  I recognize her, but cannot place her.

Perhaps she was here, when the God died?  I try to recall all the strange faces that had gathered before the world had seemingly exploded and all hell had broke loose on the crystal encrusted Bear God of the red falls.  Either way, she’s beautiful, and between my interest in speaking to the male with the two dragons and getting to know her name, I find my hooves splashing through the red water and towards all three of them.

I catch the tail end of the accented words of the buckskin damsel, glancing at her well shaped figure (what’s revealed from the shadow, anyway) in a way that could be deemed lecherous as I slip in among their gathering.

"You are north of the Threshold," I answer with a quirky grin, "from which all of Helovia branches."

Taking my eyes away from the dark horned woman, I let my gaze wander over the filly with so much disinterest that it is barely a glance before looking over to Abraham, again confused by the striking similarities – and the differences.  His horn is a single straight weapon looped with another, while the child I remember is crowned differently, but the figures…

"I’m Rikyn," I say, my true name, the name I told the dark child in the forest; a name he’ll know if he’s the same child, changed by some scar or magic.  And what had the dark one’s name been?

I find that I cannot recall, and smile at the irony.

Perhaps he couldn’t remember my name anymore, either.



[ OOC: I TOTALLY FORGOT I HAD THIS TABLE ]