04-01-2016, 07:13 PM
He’s tied the feathers into his mane, manipulating strands of hair that he cannot see until his short white mane is as much black and blue feathers as it is little wisps of foal fluff. They are feathers he’s found (or feathers that Tyrinn had scared off terrified birds), feather’s he’s scavenged for this purpose. He looks foolish, perhaps, but as he prances about with them flapping against his sky blue neck, he is happy.
Happier than he’s been since mother and father disappeared, happier than he’s been since Tyrinn left him beside the lake.
The sabino colt trips – as he often does –and tumbles down a hill. The broad wings that he wraps around his body take most of the brunt of the fall, but it still knocks the wind out of him. He lays, breathless, on his side as the clouds soar overhead. There’s a lion in that one, he sees, and pulls himself up to watch as it floats across the sky. By the time it is out of sight it’s gone from a lion to a tree to a horse with an unnaturally long neck, and Merrick barely resists taking to the air to follow it.
He cannot leave the thicket.
There is danger outside the thicket.
Even as he thinks it, he hears the rumble of their voices. Loud, hungry, the sound of horses with sharpened teeth waiting for little colts with tasty ears to stumble into their traps. He can’t go out there. He must stay here – Tyrinn had said so.
Happier than he’s been since mother and father disappeared, happier than he’s been since Tyrinn left him beside the lake.
The sabino colt trips – as he often does –and tumbles down a hill. The broad wings that he wraps around his body take most of the brunt of the fall, but it still knocks the wind out of him. He lays, breathless, on his side as the clouds soar overhead. There’s a lion in that one, he sees, and pulls himself up to watch as it floats across the sky. By the time it is out of sight it’s gone from a lion to a tree to a horse with an unnaturally long neck, and Merrick barely resists taking to the air to follow it.
He cannot leave the thicket.
There is danger outside the thicket.
Even as he thinks it, he hears the rumble of their voices. Loud, hungry, the sound of horses with sharpened teeth waiting for little colts with tasty ears to stumble into their traps. He can’t go out there. He must stay here – Tyrinn had said so.