09-12-2021, 09:52 AM
The tannic water of the creek is black and cold, trickling out from those deep, dark places where some venture but never return. There are mysteries within the forest, hidden behind tangled branches and vines and ancient trees whose bark is twisted and tortured, their limbs reaching out for those brave or foolish enough to come too near. Beryl has never feared the darkness, but she has never purposefully sought out the mysterious and strange before, either.
They find her anyway, the strange things, and the dark things. The golden mare turns away from the shadows ahead to disentangle herself from a hawthorn branch that's snagged a knot in her mane when she hears her name on a familiar tongue and freezes. It all started with him.
(That's not true, it all started a long time ago now, but she is too wrapped up in her most recent troubles to remember.)
Warm light follows her when, slowly, she turns her head to face the stallion that is nearly inseparable from the tanglewood around him. She remembers trying to pull him towards her, and how his darkness had rebelled, recoiled away from that intimate violation. And perhaps she has been too much in the company of her own shadows because even now a whisper in the back of her mind tempts her to try it again. Caution tamps that desire down; the last time they met, the world became a graveyard.
"Torryn," she replies, warily, "You look the same."
He, like everyone else, is still just bones. Black bones made of shadow, but bones nonetheless. She should leave - what good can come of meeting a Bodach in the woods? - but the anxiety brewing in her chest drives her further away from the warmth and safety she's left behind her. The dread sense that she does not deserve them - and that they do not deserve her black moods - overwhelms everything else, staining her thoughts as dark as the water rushing around her golden legs, so she lingers instead, and she drowns her misgivings with sarcasm.
"Are your eyes still the wrong color?"
They find her anyway, the strange things, and the dark things. The golden mare turns away from the shadows ahead to disentangle herself from a hawthorn branch that's snagged a knot in her mane when she hears her name on a familiar tongue and freezes. It all started with him.
(That's not true, it all started a long time ago now, but she is too wrapped up in her most recent troubles to remember.)
Warm light follows her when, slowly, she turns her head to face the stallion that is nearly inseparable from the tanglewood around him. She remembers trying to pull him towards her, and how his darkness had rebelled, recoiled away from that intimate violation. And perhaps she has been too much in the company of her own shadows because even now a whisper in the back of her mind tempts her to try it again. Caution tamps that desire down; the last time they met, the world became a graveyard.
"Torryn," she replies, warily, "You look the same."
He, like everyone else, is still just bones. Black bones made of shadow, but bones nonetheless. She should leave - what good can come of meeting a Bodach in the woods? - but the anxiety brewing in her chest drives her further away from the warmth and safety she's left behind her. The dread sense that she does not deserve them - and that they do not deserve her black moods - overwhelms everything else, staining her thoughts as dark as the water rushing around her golden legs, so she lingers instead, and she drowns her misgivings with sarcasm.
"Are your eyes still the wrong color?"
@Torryn