you look like yourself
but you're somebody else.
It has been years. Aldric has been far from home for long enough that he does not recognize the Beqanna he returns to. He had been little more than a boy when he’d gone, escaping into the great unknown without purpose or direction. The years away have been kind to him, and his red dun pelt blooms with good health and lean muscle winds around his framework. His white splashed limbs pound out a rhythm that carries him deep into the familiar-but-unfamiliar land, though he isn’t looking for anything at all as he streaks through the redwoods, skirting the bay and diving back into the forest. It’s only the river that stops him, he gallops along it a short while before it curves sharply away to his right. It is in this bow of land that Aldric slows to a trot and then a walk. His coat is reddened, dark with sweat but the autumn air cools him with it’s crisp caress.
Drawing to the waters edge he lowers his badger marked face and takes the briefest drink from the fast flowing river. He has tasted these waters before, but the memories are vague, leftovers from what he recalls as happy childhood spent on this continent. He’s returned now because it seems right to, because his blood sings a song of this place that he cannot hear but somehow recognizes. He shakes his head when he straightens again, and then some out of place noise makes him frees a little and flick his left ear once, twice. Turning slowly he breathes deep the scent of decaying leaves, and river, and something muskier.
Aldric recognizes that smell, though it’s vague and brought to him only by chance because of his location downwind. Turning he notices a heavily use trail leading out of the trees toward the waters edge. His green eyes follow the path into the darkness of the trees. Something is waiting for someone to come down that trail. A deer maybe, or a family of foodhardy quail. Aldric frowns, but life does need to go one for prey and predator alike. He will not disturb the creature he imagines is perched on a rock or tree branch overlooking the trail, to chase it off to find another meal (perhaps of someone like him… or even him if he weren’t wary).
Quietly Aldric begins to turn away to cross the river and head out toward the coast. But then, his ear flicks again, the sound of leaves and earth beneath someone’s feet, someone too big to be a deer or a rabbit. Someone is coming down the path, he cannot see them but he knows they are making their way towards the bow in the river. Someone is going to walk right into the lion’s trap.
only it aint on the surface
Aldric