Beauty is a beast // Savage pony

[Santana]

The forest held a certain joy for the draconic stallion. It had been a haven to him for such a long time, in times both good and bad. Today he wandered it in his birth form, a pale horse in palomino and white. Thin rivulets of ice marbled his skin where gold and white met. To touch him would be a curious thing, to feel skin at once frozen and burning with dragon blood. 

He paused beneath a hefty beech, lifting a wing to scratch the skin of his hip against its bark. A groan of pleasure rumbled from his chest. In the heat of summer, it was far preferable to spend his time in the shade of the trees, or submerge himself to the eyes in the deep parts of the river. 

He thought about Loess, where family he barely knew lived. By rights, he should feel at home there. Yet something stopped him from feeling like he belonged. Maybe with time that feeling would fade. He hoped so, anyway. For now, he wandered where he wanted to, slept alone with the stars for company and little else. What else did he need, really? 

That was bullshit, if course. It was lonely and he knew it. But his family was a tangled mess, and his love life was rather non-existent at the moment. It was all tied up in regret and mistakes and he knew it was mostly his fault. Rather than face these things, he let himself fade into the background, among the trees and birds. Youthful vigor and curiosity had been steadily replaced with a general mistrust in himself and those around him. 

So he let the trees keep him close, and wandered deeper into them, feeling his breath deepen in the gloom of the forest. It was peaceful here, even if he himself wasn't. He could pretend, for a while at least, that all was right in his world. 

@[savage]

[lilian]

I never cared for anyone so much. I was born with a bomb inside my gut.

If she were younger, perhaps there would be some whimsy to it.
If she ever smiled, perhaps she could be mistaken for someone adventurous.
Bright-eyed and curious, someone with an appetite for life and everything in it.

But she is none of those things and there is no whimsy to her wandering. Instead, there is a certain melancholy to the way she looks for something that she’ll never find. She wanders because her father taught her to and sometimes she misses his patient smile and his good nature so fiercely that it makes her ache and she takes to the forest or the meadow or the edge of the river as if she might find it there. Or, at least, something like it.

She never has and she knows that she never will, but still she searches. She continues to break her own heart, taking her grief between her teeth, letting it dissolve on her tongue. Because she is nothing and no one and she has never meant much to anyone except her father. She supposes it’s her fault – or, she would if she allowed herself to dwell on these things.

She’d found a home in Sylva but she has not yet learned how to trust the silence there. She understands the silence here, but the quiet there makes her skin tremble. The quiet here wraps itself around her shoulders like a blanket and, despite the heavy canopy, the sun ensconces her in sweet heat.

She happens upon him by accident, deep in the darkness. The creatures she encounters here are generally strange and fantastical and she stops short when she sees him, stricken by the way he seems to glow even in all this darkness (he is so pale that he seems to emanate his own light). She presses her mouth into a thin, thoughtful line, and ventures closer.

“Are you looking for something?” she asks, though she’s never been particularly brave. 

lilian

@[Bruja]

[Santana]

Every so often his solitude was broken by those brave enough to wander the woods. Brave or foolhardy, it was such a thin line. His eyes caught on her, sunlight dappling her shadow colored coat as she moved. Their eyes met through the dim forest, his own aglow with inner fire as the little mare made herself known. 

He shrugged at her words, tail flicking mindlessly through the underbrush. "Nothing in particular. Food, maybe." He answered in his smoky baritone. A slow smile lifted his lips as he made a show of looking the mare up and down, humming appreciatively as he took her in. She was the sort to go looking for danger, he could tell just by the way she stood. 

He took leisurely steps forward, putting his glittering form right before her dark one. His smile broadened, a ray of light falling just so to reveal the gleam of jagged teeth that lined his maw. Playing with his food, as it were. A hiss of breath escaped his lips, the lightest of laughs as he prowled ever nearer. Close enough to graze the skin of her shoulder, he let the sharp ridges of his teeth fall in the faintest of touches. 

How would she react? What would this wandering girl do when approached with such open attention. He growled softly, every motion and sound designed to remind her that he was predatory. "Maybe you're exactly what I was hoping to find." His breath fell hot on her neck, almost burningly so. 

@[lilian]