12-15-2015, 10:52 AM
The forest crowds close; Loam is too deep within it to tell if the hot bright morning is long gone. She is a creature of mossy nook and damp crevasse - an aberration of their species, because the light hurts her eyes and she prefers anonymity. Those short bursts of time spent outside the arms of wayward cedars and dark elms are aberrations themselves in her nature. She cannot explain why at times, she looks to haunt them with her pitiful company or perhaps she knows why but chose not to say.
Loam is not overly fond of self examination; she is a basic creature allowed few comforts beyond a foal at her flank or thoughts of a buckskin stallion that made the sick red muscle of her heart quicken.
She is deep in the forest, almost to her treasured secret glade and the scummy pond she stupidly drinks from. But something causes her to deviate from the chosen path onto a trail big enough for a deer or a little black horse like Loam, all rough shadow and sharp bony shape. Her pace never quickens, and she only stops once beneath a break in the interlocked boughs to crane her head upwards - a twilight sky pierces her dark emerald gaze. Then, that ‘something’ that first swayed her brain into changing course, is back.
It is a faint thread of scent that picks at the edge of her memories, teasing in its familiar musk and though her pace still does not quicken, her heart does in sheer stupid deplorable wonder that she - Loam, of all beasts! - should feel this way: eager, for the first time in her life. She bursts forth from the thickest knot of trees like a bullet, all blurred black speed until she catches herself and stops just short of him. She gives a soft snort of surprise, her green eyes already greedily drinking in the sight of him and Loam, so unused to want or need, feels like she has to touch him to make sure he's real and not imagined.
“I must be dreaming,” she mutters sourly to herself, her chin nearly tucked to her breast as she attempts to not breathe him in. It was too much. It was really all too much and then she bites his shoulder, the gesture mean, more so than gentle (Ha! When is Loam ever gentle than when she has a tagalong foal at her heels?). “Hm, I'm not dreaming after all.” she mumbles, not the least bit apologetic for biting him. Loam feels a queer mixture of longing and loathing as she looks at the stallion, her eyes full of that pale buckskin pelt that she has an unnatural fondness for.