She came at him like a fury, a possessed thing, a river goddess with whom he had broken an accord. As much as it went against everything he knew about his own nature, he allowed himself to be punished. He had only defended himself, baring his teeth, kicking and striking in Bardot’s direction but not attacking her in return as he was pushed into the shallows and up onto the bank. The fight sounded much like their union had, squeals and snarls and screams filling the air. He’d tried to brand her in his clouded lust, she had branded him in her fury.
In the end, he had stared after her as she disappeared, a bead of crimson flowing down the contours of his throat. A dozen other wounds wept darkly across the stallion’s blue skin, many more bruises and contusions (far fewer than he deserved) scattered across his monstrous frame.
She does not belong to him, but if there was ever a woman that should…
Tunnel does not journey deep into the forest anymore. His orbit widens day by day until he paces the river for a week until he spends another digging into the snow of the meadow to find a dinner of grass and broken gravel. Each night the blue stallion moves among others and does no harm. He pins his ears and looks unpleasant, bleeding shadows, but feels fewer and fewer of the old irresistible impulses to take, plunder, or destroy. He notices the cadence of conversations, the play, and the flirtations between strangers in a way he never has before. The further he moves from the dark and the once magnetic pull of the deep wood the more that unfamiliar awareness steals over him. He stands on the border of Loess the evening he begins to guess that the madness that had gripped him when he went too far into the Forest might have altered his mind in some way. Something must have broken.
She had told the giant black pegasus that she was wintering in the Pampas and in the dark of night Tunnel steals into the grassy plains unseen. He is virtually invisible in the full dark. Though it is not late, winter shortens the day and gives him many more hours to wield his rogueish ability. Finding Bardot once he arrives in the Pampas is not difficult, though there are many scents of flowers here, almost all are gone old and faded. Among these many scents, her’s stands out to him, he knows those flowers well now and as their perfume grows more distinct so does his craving to be near her. There she stands among the bent grasses and trampled snow, and when he drops his dark camouflage he is close enough for her to continue making additions to the scars upon his hide. “Do you know, I couldn’t see how beautiful you were that first day.” Rumbles Tunnel, reaching out to draw his muzzle over the leopard spots dappling her neck.
@Ciri
