02-16-2026, 11:29 PM
harrowed
Like a foal learning how to walk with steady legs, Harrowed learns how to navigate the world as his new self. It feels so strange to see someone he is sure is in distress but to not feel that emotion calling to him. Strange to eat only plants and not gorge himself on the feelings of others at their lowest. The predator in him has been silenced, and he does not know if it will wake again — or what form it will take when it does.
His dreams haunt him, ghosts of his nightmares linger in the waking world almost every day now. Miniature bodachs with gleaming red eyes. The torn, twisted versions of his family. Sometimes it takes most of the day for these visions to fade away under the sun, melted away like snow.
Today it he is being haunted but the small, leaf-like bugs are easy to forget about. They are intangible, he has already figured that out, so their presence is more annoying than it is dangerous.
He is looking for a distraction, something to pull him out of his own thoughts, when he spots the mare with a familiar looking brand on her. His own, gnarled thing, rests on the lower side of his neck and — though it is healed — he swears it itches upon seeing someone else who was there that night.
Harrowed looks at the pale mare, trying to place her among the small crowd that had gathered but the truth of it was any memory of those strangers had been eclipsed by everything that had happened afterwards.
He approaches though, knowing too well how misery loves company (he had once been a bodach, after all), and greets her with a quiet "You too?"
His dreams haunt him, ghosts of his nightmares linger in the waking world almost every day now. Miniature bodachs with gleaming red eyes. The torn, twisted versions of his family. Sometimes it takes most of the day for these visions to fade away under the sun, melted away like snow.
Today it he is being haunted but the small, leaf-like bugs are easy to forget about. They are intangible, he has already figured that out, so their presence is more annoying than it is dangerous.
He is looking for a distraction, something to pull him out of his own thoughts, when he spots the mare with a familiar looking brand on her. His own, gnarled thing, rests on the lower side of his neck and — though it is healed — he swears it itches upon seeing someone else who was there that night.
Harrowed looks at the pale mare, trying to place her among the small crowd that had gathered but the truth of it was any memory of those strangers had been eclipsed by everything that had happened afterwards.
He approaches though, knowing too well how misery loves company (he had once been a bodach, after all), and greets her with a quiet "You too?"
@Wayfair