Pain consumed him. It pulled at him, it tingled, burned, gnawed and irritated him to no end. There was never any relief, not so long as he kept moving. The night air was chilly against his skin, which would have been soothing, had it not simply stung like a bitch hell bent on revenge. What was worse, he kept on wincing every time it renewed its painful grip upon him - which then inspired increasing amounts of pain, over and over again. Eventually, he simply walked with a deep frown etched into his brow, his ears pinned against the poll of his crown, his eyes opened barely a slit, his mouth twisted into an cruel, ugly snarl. Between his chin and chest, there rested an orb, which glowed gently, and seemed to hum quietly in rhythm with each painful step the Spaniard took. It was fortunate that his bodice was naturally athletic - the trek from the Deep Forest to the Endless Blue was along one, made longer and more arduous by the fact that pain blurred not only the vision of the brute, but also the thought processes.
Selfish is as selfish does, the reminder seemed to chime over and over in his crown, as he walked, it was as if he was storming down a hallway of memories - only, it was merely the same memory on repeat. An ugly, beastly mare had asked for his partnership, and he mocked her, he laughed at her, he ridiculed her along with the rest of those in his high court. It was not until the Sun set that she had transformed into something he thought to be beautiful, a treasure, a jewel - and she had cursed him. To undo this, you come undone. He recalled the last snippet of her words too, chewing on them, mulling them over. Did he truly know what it meant to be selfless? Had he truly earned parentage over this orb, this new life, for being selfless? Did he know what it meant to be a parent? A father, at least figurative? No, it would take more then being a figurative father - he had promised to the doe that he would do his best - he would be the best. He would live up to what he had claimed parentage was about, or else.. He would find someone else, someone more suited to the task.
It was with his consciousness barely holding on that the steed made the trek. From afar, he potentially looked majestic, with his thick neck curled, his tail swaying in his wake, his horn held proudly before him. The orb gave him a luminous silhouette, and so it was not until one took a closer look that they could see the way half of his forelock had been burned away, the way his eyelashes had melted together so that the left eye was unable to open, the way his nape stank of rotten flesh as flies gathered on the weeping wounds. Tears tried to leak from his pained eye, but they merely pooled behind the shut lid, and wept out once the corruption grew too large. He walked, in this seemingly endless midnight, he pushed himself onwards, driven by a need to live, a stubborn, foolish, powerful urge to refuse death. He had seen death take two lives - one of them, the true mother of this orb. What had she called it? He wondered, letting his thoughts wander off on delirious tangents. Cerndyr, he remembered, and he recalled something else too - it was a royal, a special, rare sort, a sole survivor amidst a field of death and destruction.
And she chose me… He didn't know whether to laugh or cry. He didn't know how it had come to this, how, out of everyone who had responded, it was he who had been given care of this rare and wondrous thing. He tripped, and then, he fell. The landing was soft - sand. The orb rolled out of reach of his hulking, collapsed mass, though he tilted his crown so that his deep violet eyes could watch it. He sniffled, and the motion caused a whole new wave of pain to ripple over him. Sand stuck to his sweaty, silver hide, just as he attempted to gather his legs beneath him once more. It was fortunate that the footing was soft, for he crumpled to his knees more than once, before finally his strong, sturdy limbs were able to bear his weight again.
Of course, that was the moment the Sun chose to rise again.
He felt the tug of the curse, first. Before the sky changed from midnight to a pale, crimson-orange, then pink, then blue, he could feel the Sun rise. It ached his very bones, deeper and far more serious than any mortal wound ever could. He looked around his transforming form, hoping that in this strange, eerie dawn, no-one would be witness to his shame, his secret, his ugly, broken down body. It enveloped him entirely, aging his skin so far that great patches of silver hair fell off completely, and what was left turned a dirty grey-white. Scabs formed along the underside of his leonine tail, and wrinkles formed as copious amounts of skin seemed to grow at an accelerated rate. Bones jutted out from his spine and hips as the curse drained him of his youth, his condition, and threatened to take his very will to live which had only just before stubbornly held on. His crown became too heavy to hold upright, and as it drooped down to the level of the sand at his feet, he saw the orb again, and simply, sighed. What could he do, but keep on living, damaged and broken though he was?
Movement along the shoreline caught his attention, as his single youthful eye grasped the pale body of Imogen. Recognition was delayed however, as he stepped clumsily closer to the orb, that rare paternal, protective instinct forcing the movement from his stiff and aged legs as he forever recalled the promise he had made. When he did recognise the young vixen, a combination of emotions overran him - he was glad to see that she was alive and well, for it surely meant that Lena was too, but he was also afraid - was she far enough away from him, that she missed the sight of his magnificent true form bowing down to the curse that consumed him? Then he looked to the waves that crashed upon the sand, and saw the rich mahogany hide of Lena herself, the glorious belle, the songbird who looked fit to be written into a fairytale. The same feelings overwhelmed him, and the beastly brute stood rooted over his orb, staring into the ocean at the beauty whose true potential he had never fully seen nor appreciated - he realised, never before had he seen her albeit under the guise of moonlight.
[um. I thought I had no muse. Then I started typing. And forgot to stop. :|
@[Lena] ]
.svg/2000px-Google_Chrome_icon_(2011).svg.png){kind=icon}
