Joints seemed to groan under the weight of the frail body, hooves came to a standstill as dust, from his body or from the ground beneath him- he didn’t know, swirled around him. Eyes that were sharp and focussed watched a small bird flitting about the trees, though they were framed with a tired and worn out mask, they sparkled with a life that was yet to be lived. Teeth that were rotted and ground away from years the curse had applied to them gnashed together behind the dirty grey maw, frustration always driving him to subconsciously want to destroy this body. Hearing that too had dampened from the magic which plagued him didn’t alert the brute to the Pegasus female until she had stepped forth from the trees to reveal her patchy bodice. Muscles twitched in preparation for flight on foot from surprise, but even that reaction was slow, sluggish, and only resulted in his head snapping around to focus his intense gaze upon her, face unreadable for the moment.

Pegasus, he thought, a species he knew of and had seen from a distance, but never had he been this close before. They had been neighbours in his homeland, but mostly kept to themselves. He had never had a negative interaction with them, but he wasn’t sure about the wings which sprouted from her shoulders, and he found himself observing closely the way the sun danced over the feathers, the way each ray was caught on a particle of dusty feather-down, and he appreciated the simple beauty it conveyed. The mare herself was put together in a comfortable fashion, again he found very little at fault with her, even enjoying the way her mane so delicately framed the darker browns and pale whites of her hide. Physical beauty was something Kirottu understood, something he longed for. This Onni, he decided was a beautiful creature. But her question caused something within him to react with mirth, and a raspy, rough coughing laughter began from him.

Help? As if he could ever rely on another to help him, to break this curse, to fix his appearance, to ever call him beautiful again. He probably looked quite mad, but as the deep chuckles subsided, he shook his once-handsome-now-unfortunate looking crown from side to side. “Unless you can turn back time, any aid you might provide would be useless to me.” A voice that hinted at once upon a time belonging to a proud, vibrant Prince croaked from his throat, gravelly and seemingly deeper with age, broken due to the wheezes of breath he so often had to inhale. The next to arrive was a stallion of taller stature to Onni, and, Kirottu annoying observed, himself. Vertebra in his neck ached as his sights tilted to view the stallion, as he noted that with his back swaying so painfully and dangerously low, his height had been reduced. The spotted one spoke, and with the comment of grandfather, Kirottu’s ears slowly leaned back, ruffling the wispy bits of mane that lingered.

He didn’t care that this stallion didn’t know any better, frankly he didn’t give a flying hoot that he ruled a herd, with all his strength and youthfulness given to him, Kirottu would have been doing the same, he believed. It annoyed him, to be reminded about his curse by others, to have it confirmed that he was nothing but an old fool to them, an ugly beast who warranted nothing more than pity and sympathy. No! He was not that, was he? In this body that resembled a gargoyle hanging off the pier of a gothic church, perhaps that’s all he was. Violet eyes flashed at the pale, speckled stallion, jealous of his youthful stance, wanting what he had, what he was deserving of, what he was born into. He would have traded places with this stallion then and there if he had the opportunity, without care for Mauja’s opinion on the matter, and he would have called him ugly and grandfather too, probably. The thought that Mauja might have taken similar offence or hurt to the words never crossed his mind.

Another stepped through the trees, this one another mare, another beauty. The way the golden hue curled about her contours, framed by the illustrious white, the chiselled shape of her tiara. She held no horn, he noted, but that wasn’t so unusual, again, he knew of Equines, and had a little bit more to do with them than with the winged ones, but even so he thought the simplicity of her lack of a horn complimented her further. So he was to be graced with the presence of all three species this warm day, frankly he didn’t really know what to do, how to handle them all. Soft tones came from the belle, his ears perked up to hear them, and he was sad for a moment that he had not been given a name from her. But then, he realised, he hadn’t given a name. But she had given him something, the name of this place, this Helovia. He chewed the thought over, his eyes distractedly glancing skywards for a moment, a habitual motion of his to check the travels of the Sun across the sky. How he hated that Sun, for the form it forced him to take.

“Beast.” He coughed up roughly, abruptly. It was what he had been calling himself when this form plagued him, he hated to give his true name in this body, he didn’t need the double reminder of his curse. Kirottu was reserved for his prime bodice, its exotic nature not always revealing of the true meaning, the joke it had begun as becoming a dark and toxic reality. “My name is Beast.” He reiterated, a bit more clearly now that the phlegm from his throat had shifted to allow the deep tones to curl about his tongue. “I am neither in need of your pity nor your help.” His voice held a slightly sharp edge to it, though he mostly focussed the pointed words at the stallion, whom he had come to see as a sort of threat, an annoying reminder of what had been forcibly removed from him during the daylight hours. Another breath wheezed out of him, however, and with another fleeting glance to the sky, he visibly took on a calmer demeanour.

“Tell me about this Helovia.” He wasn’t really interested, but he did want company, he was reluctant to realise. Even if they looked at him with pitiful, repulsed gazes, he could not shake the habit of giving an order without the courtesy of a please or thank you. The tinge of purple In his pools conveyed a sadness, a longing, but for what, they must never know.