Keeper-
Keeper cannot imagine what it is like to always be sequestered in shadows and secrets. However much that she likes secrets, she is not one of them - never has been, though she has oft been overlooked because of her ordinariness. She had known the strains of familial love that come because it is an expectation but that love was sometimes marred by a strange pity she did not understand. Perhaps because she could not mourn what she had never had - horns like her father, or wings like her half-brother, or even the beautiful green skin like her half-sister.
Besides, Keeper had the deer and their liquid looks as she stood nearby in stern patience and quiet observation of their furtive ears and careful munching. Deer did nothing rash unless it was running away. This much she had learned in her studies of them and her need to belong, a thing that she herself barely understood because her own equine instinct insisted that she belonged in that small familial herd of her upbringing but Keeper swore that something else insisted not, that she did not belong or else, belonged elsewhere in a niche that she had yet to carve out for herself.
Sometimes, one has to find their way through the brambles and the mud before finding a clear flowing stream and sunlight to warm the back. Maybe others needs caves and darkness, as her eyes never leave his - blue and unblinking to match her black, blinking gaze. Though she thinks that if she blinks too much, he’ll just disappear - become a neverwas, a shadow and a trick of the cave that yawns big all around them. He is far too quiet but Keeper knows that she cannot press him for sound or much else; he is like a mole unaccustomed to the sunlight or in this case, the light of the moon the shines down just outside the cave-mouth. She wonders if it’ll hurt him like sunlight does a mole, will he shrink back from it and flee?
Fleeing is more deer-like and she likes this strange blue-eyed stallion all the more because of that sudden thought in her strange brain. She catches the slight shake of his head, the sudden slack in his jaw, the pause and the hesitation in his step as he moves forward at her quiet persistent beckoning. Looks on as he achieves the smallest measure of success by poking his head out between the creeper vines and giving her a snort of uncertainty. Keeper backs up a step to keep pace with him, not at all surprised by how brave the blue roan is. She had seen the spark of fear in his eyes and would not have blamed him for shaking his head no and drawing her further into his shadowy domain.
Instead, he dared to face her world full of moonlight and forgotten mushrooms. Because of her. Which thrilled Keeper to no end! She encouraged him with a gentle chuff of breath through her nostrils as the strained whinny reverberated up his throat and reached her ears; she even stretched out her muzzle to him as he snorted, searching for her and she could tell that it was getting hard for him to see her or much of anything in the bright moonlight. Her nose found his, then moved back to his shoulder as she pressed up against his side. Keeper was small next to him, still encouraging as their heads poked out of the creeper vines but she let him take his time in reacquainting with the night, figuring that even the stars could do some damage.
Odd to think a star could hurt someone.
Odder to think the moon could, but she could smell his fear as much as she could almost taste it in her mouth and it made her sick to her stomach.
“We can go back inside,” she ventured in the barest of whispers as her gaze slid sideways and sought his.
not knowing how deep the woods are and lightless
@[Balto]