09-07-2016, 08:34 PM
His tears make puddles; a queer mix of sentiment and mud that pools beneath his head.
She is afraid he will drown in his own sorrow, but her fear is not so great as to make her move him in some way. Rather, it is paralyzing and she flashes back to a time when the tears of others fell on her like rain and she lay not in a pool of her own tears but blood, damnably red and darkening the grass under her head.
Scalped blinks away the memory;
She is brave, brave enough to bring her muzzle inches from his neck. His stink is one of stallion and sorrow, but there is more pain than horse there, she thinks. She blows out a gentle breath on his skin, but he flinches at it and she backs up again. Something stranger happens after that --
He stiffens.
He snarls.
She lets him bark and bare his teeth, and she is still unafraid in the face of his naked, raw pain. Scalped comes back in close, her lips skim the length of his neck exposed to her like the belly of some beast. He tries to be beastly and she refuses to let him. It is his pain that lashes out at her; that snarls and slavers, as a thing dark and wild comes to the surface in his eyes. Her breath catches in her throat, a hitch - then, she can breathe, in and out, and she recognizes the wounded look of him, an animal in distress, and she is beset by sentiments old and familiar like a pair of hands running up her neck, brown and long-fingered.
Scalped sighs, steps around him and folds her legs neatly beneath her. Her side touches his, barrel to back, and she speaks more to him and the wind than anything else. “You’ve lost someone.” It is statement, perceived fact, or perhaps instinct that drives her to say this but it falls like hard truth from her tongue. Scalped is moved by compassion and comparison; loss is familiar to her, though she lost a boy and he lost a daughter that she knows nothing about, or even that this is the origin of his pain. She just feels it - the pain, and it feels great and terrible, and she can shoulder as much of it as she can, as he lets her.
“I cried like this once, too. But it was too late, always too late.”
The admission is soft, pained, and she hates the memory of it.
She is afraid he will drown in his own sorrow, but her fear is not so great as to make her move him in some way. Rather, it is paralyzing and she flashes back to a time when the tears of others fell on her like rain and she lay not in a pool of her own tears but blood, damnably red and darkening the grass under her head.
Scalped blinks away the memory;
She is brave, brave enough to bring her muzzle inches from his neck. His stink is one of stallion and sorrow, but there is more pain than horse there, she thinks. She blows out a gentle breath on his skin, but he flinches at it and she backs up again. Something stranger happens after that --
He stiffens.
He snarls.
She lets him bark and bare his teeth, and she is still unafraid in the face of his naked, raw pain. Scalped comes back in close, her lips skim the length of his neck exposed to her like the belly of some beast. He tries to be beastly and she refuses to let him. It is his pain that lashes out at her; that snarls and slavers, as a thing dark and wild comes to the surface in his eyes. Her breath catches in her throat, a hitch - then, she can breathe, in and out, and she recognizes the wounded look of him, an animal in distress, and she is beset by sentiments old and familiar like a pair of hands running up her neck, brown and long-fingered.
Scalped sighs, steps around him and folds her legs neatly beneath her. Her side touches his, barrel to back, and she speaks more to him and the wind than anything else. “You’ve lost someone.” It is statement, perceived fact, or perhaps instinct that drives her to say this but it falls like hard truth from her tongue. Scalped is moved by compassion and comparison; loss is familiar to her, though she lost a boy and he lost a daughter that she knows nothing about, or even that this is the origin of his pain. She just feels it - the pain, and it feels great and terrible, and she can shoulder as much of it as she can, as he lets her.
“I cried like this once, too. But it was too late, always too late.”
The admission is soft, pained, and she hates the memory of it.
![[Image: commission____scalped_by_pegasusstudios-dahbsg9.jpg]](http://pre10.deviantart.net/5738/th/pre/i/2016/254/d/3/commission____scalped_by_pegasusstudios-dahbsg9.jpg)