Incredulous blue-green eyes peer out between sticky webs of wet, blonde forelock, straining into the whirling beyond, trying as he might to draw the outline of each stranger’s ever moving body amid torrents of rain. The expression pooling within them, leaking like disease along the lines on his face, is stunned, affronted, but as the tides of a cloudy, night-cloaked heaven unleash down upon him, all is hidden from public perception. Neon veins of bright lightening as they echo through the vast openness, offer only a warped, flicker of insight into the mood as it’s unfolding.

Amid the writhing tempest: the beating, wind-lashed rain, the ear-splitting thunder and the blinding, cracking lightning ‘happening’ all around them, it seems reasonable (even expected), for the crowd of overbearing, ‘touchy-feely’, and pushy strangers to misinterpret messages – both expressed verbally and through body language. They are taking their mistake, however, to a whole new level of insensitivity (Noah believes), and all quite without the same discretion with which the confounded winged stallion, had initially offered his low, ‘growling’ warning – not to Roland, who is yet still, to act in any way impolite.

- - - - -

That puny snarl, issued to the fool alone who thoughtlessly charged himself to interfere physically with a stranger (the second he’d muscled up beside Noah like an unwanted, unnecessary crutch), had triggered it all – a landslide, which really needn’t have been… All of the wounds which might have served to hamper the silver and gold’s ascent up the mountain had been healed, twice (the Song-bird marked thrice) – not that the winged was ungrateful), and all this had been even before Toulouse’s own eyes. He of all should have known there to be no reason whatsoever, for any decision to man-handle.

Lord Rikyn’s offensive and wry reaction to his quad-horned companion’s bullheadedness proved to secure the blooming cloud of mistrust and tainted opinion clawing through Noah’s mind. At least the respectful male (Roland), and the Songbird, were a better, healthier representation of what future might await them after the mountain’s top.

The very unfortunate sequence of events which had followed Noah’s warning to ‘Toulouse,’ however, quickly escalated into a futile struggle of wills, nothing short of ridiculous. Should the winged warrior have been able to pluck all of the ill-calculated words and mannerisms from of the grip of the overriding weather, he might have about faced at that point and vanished into the ether altogether – yes, off the edge of the cliff with wings unfurled, and not bothered to waste his energy trying to reach an understanding (or the pinnacle) at all. The creatures, the ‘horned-ones’, were indeed another alien-type race altogether – and quite reasonably inappropriate it appeared (perhaps by their standard).

- - - - -

The stallion, all the time, is concerned solely for the dove, and she flutters off ahead into the wild without him.

Like an obnoxious child flaring in the face of needed reprimand, the cloth-draped prince roars loudly his outrage at being warned away – never had the well-natured island-dweller dealt with such a pigheaded beast. As if to add salt to the metaphorical wounds Toulouse, himself, had already caused (by way of being outwardly forceful and careless), the other skates by Noah to the rear and proceeds to spew a further insult of verbal vomit, senseless vexation, into the gale.

Has he no self-control?

Bewildered, tired and undeniably angry, the winged stallion’s hindquarters coil tightly. Perhaps it’d be easier to engage the rude prince in battle, yet now is not the time; the taller (just), might easily plunge down off the path to his end… Instead, those thighs unleash a burst of forward propulsion, thrusting his burly bulk forwards and beyond the (queerer every minute), group’s middle. Words given by Lord Rikyn to soothe the prince off his high-horse, fall thankfully short of his ears (the wind howls in his ears while he moves); he does hear however some of those which follow - regarding big metal, yet his stride never falters (it certainly, clearly needs no aid), as it attempts to recover the distance between he and the rogue dove.  

Noah

I was born a warrior
I was born a warrior