i am a stranger to you; claim, anyone

[crota]

C R O T A
The hills were what she had to travel to in order to reach the mountains that lead to the field and it is almost immediate the way the air lifts and turns light when the claim on it is released. It draws her to a stop and the silence that travels through the hills is almost defeaning, causing her to turn and look out across the land. It is nothing special, this place, but it a place she could make home for herself and maybe the others. Something she could give back to them when the time was right.

Stepping forward the spotted mare begins to make her way deeper into the hills in search of a place she could rightfully make her move and the moment she can no-longer smell the purple stallion's scent she comes to a stop in a small clearing amongst the ferns and cacti on the hillside and slowly scans her eyes across the dark green landscape with it's rolling lands and whispering winds. Maybe claiming this was a test and the monsters were waiting in the shadows to eat whoever dare try, but who was she to care. Maybe for once she could finally have her own piece of home, that is if she wasn't eaten for doing so.

It is then she makes her claim, nodding her head as she speaks the words loudly, "Mine," she pauses. "This place is now mine. I make my claim." With a racing heart she feels the feathers in her mane begin to twist and turn with the wind as they dance with her voice and with a deep breath she steps forward into the light of the sun on the hillside and stares out over the rest of the homeland that she had come across. "I will help this place to grow and then I will let it pass on to the next one."

She doesn't want it forever. She just wants to be the creator of something. Anything. A starter if you will. And here she is, finally doing it even without traits or special colors. One hundred percent normal and making her own place. The way she had always wanted to. She may not be strong like the rest, but she didn't need to be. She wasn't out looking to be the ruler of the world, or really a ruler at all. She just wanted a home. A home where she fit in. Sounds pretty simple right?

[crota]

C R O T A
Crota wasn't like the one that had stepped up close behind. She hadn't had time in the world or any other to bare witness to the negativities of the world. She was still so fresh and new to the workings of Beqanna and how there were actual monsters that lay in wait in the dark. How the evil of politics and leadership could pull the worst out of others. Which is probably exactly why she claims this land without hesitation or worry.

Though deep down in the pit of her stomach as she stands there, looking out at the rolling green hills, the smallest tinge of hesitation threatens to break free. Though before she can do anything about it the sound of an unfamiliar voice travels through the air from behind her and reaches her ears causing her to turn her small spotted head quickly in the direction of the other. It's the other's dark black coat that catches her attention first and then her words.

"I like you, little thing," the statement makes her smile instantly and with steady movements she turns to face the other. "I like you as well, and yes, this is yours, too." Laughing softly she shakes her head and turns to look out across the hills before glancing back at the black mare. "You may stay as long as you like," pausing for a moment she turns her head back so that she is fully facing the stranger once more. "I'm Crota. What's your name?

[Spear + Spark]

The mists have cleared from their cache of hidden lands; lands that beg exploration and rouse a spirit in him that longs for the thrill of the unknown. Many of them have been laid claim to, and that is no bother to him - he is not after land and other spoils, just the long endless miles underfoot through terrains not altogether familiar to him, like the hills of cragged rock down which various springs flow and sing. It looks a harsh place, beautiful but challenging - one misstep, he thinks, and it is easy to break a leg as he maneuvers between boulders larger than he is. He has his father’s build; stout, muscled, tending towards a heritage of cart-pulling draft horses meant for plough and servitude (and maybe, sometimes war) rather than his mother’s spirited and unbridled feral bloodline.

It is there, though; in the set of his eyes and his roman nose - that feral look of a horse too long outside of saddles and fences, things that he has never known. The only thing to corral him has always been the bond between his twin sister and him, but Spark ventured out with him less and less. She had settled down as only one like her could, and that drove a chasm of separation between them because he lost his partner in all things wild and explorative. He had known it was coming though, since the first time they left these lands when the mists had only given a few to choose from and they’d gone away and gone apart. Spear had seen and done things as only a colt can, and he came back a stallion changed, thicker and heavier than when he had first gone.

Spark understood him less and less, too.

So Spear spent less and less time around her. She was too moony over that other stallion, Giver.

The bay overo stallion is traveling downhill, picking a careful path between the cacti and ferns that reach out to clutch at his feathered feet. His eyes - the left one red and the right one black, pick out the shapes of others up ahead on the hillside. He can smell that they are mares and unmarked in the traditional sense as having been claimed by another, but he shows little interest in that - well, instincts rise unbidden but he tamps them down as he looks over the little spotted mare with the bird feathers in her hair and the lithe black that states that she likes her. The little spotted one makes her own declaration of like before introductions are made and he assumes that now is as good as any to make his presence known, though he suspects they’d have either smelled him or heard him coming beforehand.

“I’m Spear, and I’d like to stay too - for a while.”

He gives a nod to them both of his big rawboned head, mane and tail blowing in the wind that rises up and over the side of the hill that they stand on.

Spear