04-15-2021, 03:26 PM
Yes, a pretty song. Cut short in the midst of Ori pushing her way past the jurassic ferns (not that Yan minded being interrupted), the bronze-ish stallion with arcing horns and an uncharacteristically long tussle of cornsilk chin hair stopped mid-tune to swing himself around and glance at the golden mare. He had changed in an instant, carefree to cautious, and the lines of his neck and shoulders seemed to tense with embarrassment at having been found out when he’d thought he was utterly alone.
“I was, er, practicing.” Yan laughed from the back of his throat, producing a sound that further cemented a sense of awkwardness between them.
“I didn’t even hear her coming.” He thought less of himself, realizing the song must’ve swept him further away from the present than he would have liked to admit. However, upon further inspection of the curious mare with skin as warm and golden as the lion's proud pelt, Yanhua felt the embarrassment leaching away. She appeared just as apologetic in expression as he was: her for having interrupted — him for subjecting her to ‘pretty’ noise in the first place. Ori smiled; Yanhua shook out the tousle of forelock covering his ancestor’s blue eyes and returned the favor.
“I sense something in you.” He told her politely, warning the stranger aloud that magical work was at play where he was concerned. Stepping closer, Yanhua breathed deeply and switched into a mode of openness. The echoes of her memories came quickly then, transforming the forest in a way that only he could see. Yan saw times past and gone, portrayed from her point-of-view: Lilli, Yan’s mother, running wild as a young filly alongside this mare. The ghosts of Ori’s past leaked into the emotional residue of the present, called forth by Yanhua’s ability, and they shone in radiant colors of amber and ripe wheat.
“You knew my mother.” Yanhua’s smile warmed. This was said as a matter-of-fact, not an estimation. Perhaps she would note the past tense, perhaps not. Yan had only just begun to use it himself. “She told the most wonderful tales about Murmuring Rivers, Paraiso, and her family there.” He sighed as the echoes drew out longer and longer, then disappeared altogether.
He was back in Taiga, and the mare with an effervescent glow surrounding her was the reality that remained. She looked lovely amid the dark swaths of green and brown, Yan admitted to himself. As lovely as his mother. His eyes rose and swept across her face calmly, like a character trying to read between the lines of what’s obviously in front of them, and in her gaze he felt the same sort of depth his mother had always had in hers. A well of knowledge beyond his own, though Yan considered himself a learned sort of horse for the times. Ori reminded him of Lilli, but she was not the mare with a brand of scorching fire etched into her shoulder. She was not Elena, who had raised him as dearly as any aunt could when Lilli had been stolen away. She was not Aletta, who Yanhua had the pleasure of meeting briefly, once.
But she was otherworldly.
“I’m Yanhua.” He told her, stopping near to where she was. From her location, the mare with mismatching eyes stood atop a small hillock and so their gaze leveled as equals. “Have you just arrived in Taiga, or am I truly the worst at my job?” Yan wondered. This time he laughed with ease.
YANHUA
@[Ori]