don't think too much; ledger

[Spear + Spark]

the incense that sun on prairie offers to sky

Flaws; they all have them.

She too, is flawed but not in the same ways or for the same reasons.

 

Her childhood had been happy.

Long hours of hide-and-seek and chase-your-tail, and the tiring rounds of play fighting and argumentative debates that dissolved into giggles and childish nips from milk-teeth. The milk-heavy teats of their medicine hat mother whom she favored (only black instead of red); the way that she curled her long legs beneath her belly and he laid down beside her, their heads hung close together in sleep. Her childhood had been a good one, the best kind of one to have - carefree and loved, kept close beneath the watchful eye of their mother or their father who was, at the time, a king in his own right (and was a king again, here now).

 

Remembering the snow and ice of the Tundra, makes her remember these things in the space of a breath and a heartbeat. Her mismatched eyes have never left his face and the way it hides beneath that tangle of forelock that allows her to glimpse just one eye of his and not a full heavy gaze like others tend to have. The more she looks at him, the more she thinks he looks as wild as she used too, before the fire burnt up all the burrs and knots in her hair and all the dirt in her fur. Fire cleanses, and it left her sleeker than she has been in years.

 

He though, is as grizzled and unkempt as her brother often is and it endears this unknown stallion to her further, that and the secrets that he keeps, like the animal in his scent that is not horse but, bear maybe? There is a musk there, that instinct cautions her against approaching closer as if touching her muzzle to him could spring an iron trap. It fascinates her; no - he fascinates her, the danger of him that sings through her hot blood like an alarm that bids her to back up the moment he turns to face her, turns that gold-flecked eye upon her and greets her in return. Spark cannot turn back now; fire and ice, destined to forever be drawn together but repelled in the same breath.

 

Her gaze flicks to his fidgeting hindquarters and she wonders why he is so anxious around her; Spark hardly is the kind to unnerve another, at least she doesn’t think she is. He extends both his muzzle and his name to her and she offers forth her own slim muzzle to touch his own for just a second, before jerking back a little shyly. “I’m Spark,” she murmurs, feeling chastised by his next question and her mouth opens then closes, as her head tilts to the side, considering.

 

“Why are you here?”

Because, she wants to say, why not? Here is as good as anywhere else.

 

What comes out though, is “You smell like snow, and I remember snow from long ago.” A frown troubles her face, as she thinks - but I don’t remember you, and she knows he was never one of her father’s subjects in that frozen kingdom of off-limit caves and towering ice.

Spark