The fillys high pitched wail cuts into his senses like a sharpened blade, sinking into his flesh with little resistance and shocking him into breaking off the assault. His teeth clack together on empty air while his hocks flex painfully beneath him in an effort to slow down, front hooves propping against the cold hardened earth. He jars to a halt nearly on top of the girl, neck arched to stare down at her panicked expression, her tiny body braced for abuse, the belief of its inevitability shining white around her eyes. Only now, at this intimate distance, does he realize that they’re a deep blue-green.

His brows pinch, heat rising on his skin. The filly can’t be more than a few months old, a child, her mane and tail still more fluff than hair. He opens his mouth to speak, the flame of his anger abruptly extinguished, snuffed out by a reflexive, instantaneous repentance, but the words are jumbled and fumbling before they even gather on his tongue, nonsensical defenses that ring hollow even in the greater emptiness of his heart.

He wants to say that he wouldn’t have hurt her, that his aggression wasn’t serious, that he’s not some monster to prey on the young and the vulnerable – but wouldn’t he? Wasn’t he? Isn’t he? Hasn’t he already? And he very nearly had again, without even a moments hesitation, and the reality of that truth galls his sensibilities far more than the vines poisonous sap does his skin.

“Okay.” He manages to rasp around his turmoil, feeling stifled and ashamed of himself for a second time in regards to his treatment of the candycorns daughter. Maybe a modicum of his conflicting, whirlwind emotions flickers across his grizzled face as he stares down at her, as his ears waver between forward and back, or maybe she interprets the change as simple gullibility on his part, a feeble old mind reaching for the proffered olive branch.

He wishes she’d tuck her little tail and run, leave him alone so he can drag his emotions back to their corners in relative peace, or at least without witnesses. The snake at his chest peeks out of his scarf, peering up at the black and auburn mass of disquiet that is his bonded, unable to stabilize the wild flailing of emotions he can't even yet grasp the full meanings of, though the tone of those emotions is discernible, and overwhelmingly, devastatingly sad.



"Alby talks" 'Strom talks'
OOC // @Larue