He’d watched the boy take his first wobbling, drunken steps; watched him nose at his mother’s cream colored flanks for the very first time. The thought of those little golden ears, still wet and half-folded from the womb, bleeds his rampage nearly dry. He grinds his teeth on unspoken slander, eyes tracing the loops of golden chain across her brow and back as the flames of anger inside him dim to anxious irritation.
“I’m not very good company.” He growls, bowing his neck to peek around her knees and hocks. “Least of all for- oh.” Where is the boy now? He wonders. Surely he’s too young to be away from the safety of mother’s teeth and teat already, but then again who is he to criticize? He's the antonym of parental responsibility - or so they say. They can say that, judges raised in the comfort of safety and ignorance that he provided for a decade and more, but never mind that lifetime of service - never mind the pain he felt sentencing his little hearts and souls to death. All that mattered was their pain, their loss, their tears, no matter that he'd saved their lives and given them a second chance at happiness - a second chance they hadn't provided him.
Shaking his head to clear the echoes of soprano voices shrieking between his ears, he strikes one solid fore-hoof against the smooth stone lining the hot spring, forcing himself entirely into the present with its sharp reverberation. "Is there anywhere here that doesn't get shat on by the weather?" Is there anywhere here that he can hide until the break of spring?
@Rexanna