Or lest appear a coward.

I was not a coward. I am not a coward. I am a god among men. I stand above everyone else in this fucking world. Even now with an ashy pelt and scars and blood dripping from my eyes I was still the most. Most everything.

Boetius.

It was a new name on my lips but I liked it. Bo. They can call me Bo. I snorted, satisfaction curling my ebon lips. Nodding to no one but myself, a stepped again into the wet snow. Dark, choking mist curled up from my feathered hooves. Each of my horns sprouted the dark fumes like a factory tower, where inside the products were questionable at best, but probably sinister by nature. How amusing.

Why the fuck was the snow so wet here? Groaning, again to no one but myself, I pressed my shoulder into a tree in an attempt to rest.

I didn't know that you cannot rest when your heart is continually pumping vile through your veins.

This place, this damnable forest, was so full of noise. Birds, and other animals, and horses. I could smell them, even as my own smoke lifted to my nostrils. My nose wrinkled as I looked around, seeing the paths that were worn down into the remnants of wet snow. Lowering my head some, I pawed at the ground. Snow moved under my solid, large hooves until green grass lit my vision.

Yes, spring was definitely on the way. With that, I assumed that many were here to find homes and a place to fill their bellies. My own stomach rumbled at the thought, and I took a mouthful of the young, cold grass. It was bitter on my tongue. Everything was bitter on my tongue. Nothing tasted as it should. I swallowed it nonetheless.

Fuck this life.

I breathed in. I breathed out.

Waiting.



talk talk

I noticed then our size difference. She was smaller than me, probably weaker. They were all weaker. I am a god. My dark, charcoal eyes narrowed some and my tail flicked again. "What do you want?" There, I asked her. No one could say I did not intend to find out her purpose for pursuing me. Perhaps she had chosen me because she could see me as a god--even through this smokey, ashen body and scars and blood. My tail flicked again. I took a step towards her, thick smog pluming up from my hooves.

I smelled her. She did not smell like anything. Just a damned horse. My head tilted some, and my tail flicked. I was coming to resemble the lion more and more every day with this new appendage. I snorted softly. "You are no royalty." I observed, ears flicking down against hard horn and sparse mane.

I scowled.

She continued to speak.

I moved.

Quickly, and with all of the grace my bulk afforded me, I stampeded forward towards the hybrid bitch. I swung my smoke pluming horns at her, my neck lowered and arched in an attempt to scrape them along her left-most wing, to damage the feathers and tissues I knew to be so precious. I was a pegasus once, after all. My hard, feathered hooves stopped me with a hard thud on the ground and my jaws lifted, neck twisting as I attempted to bite at the white yearling's face.

I hated her.

I hated the World's Edge for birthing such a bastard child.

I hated it all.

I moved.

Swinging my ass in her direction, the pink mare forgotten, I sent out another kick--hard, large hooves just thirsting to hear the snap of tiny canon beneath their blow. Another time, perhaps. I was done with her. Maybe she would have some thick, red lines on her body to remind her to watch her fucking tongue around those bigger, stronger, better than her.

Fuck her Moon Goddess.

I am a god.

I snorted, leaving the two women with no words. I simply flicked my long, lion's tail and walked off into the darkness of the forest. Snow crunched under my feather-covered hooves. Smoke followed me in my wake, thick and choking and ominous.

"Boetius." I called out, finally, nearly a hundred paces off.

[Exit Bo.]