He feels it when his slumber broke at last, feels how the burning of life flowing actively in his veins licked like fire out in fingers from his heart. The empty thud of decades, now, suddenly sounded as if it had... that 'something more' that separated the undead from the living. It had substance in the way that oobleck differed from plain water. The thud met with resistance; echoed, but less so than for so long.
The black of his body does not immediately expose this change, having dove into the ether within for so long before turning back at last and taking equally much time to wander back into the present. Time changes, fairies wreak havoc in the land of his birth - going wild like the gods and mages that had spawned since the first footfall of Banat Er Rih on Desert soil. They spin magic tight into the bodies of horsekind, make it both less and more than it's raw natured self. They weave it into the bone and sinew of those that claim Beqanna still as their home - and when at last the world seems it's quietest, the Buzzard of the Sunrise wakes again at last.
His golden eye blinks open, wide with a pupil yet spread so broad as to make the iris seem to strain to glitter out around the sides. Then, with a snap that a watcher could have sworn to hear, it is pin-tight and his first great breath gasps those mighty lungs full and his ribs strain to contain it. His first bellow is of pain and wheezes more like a bray than a neigh. His muscles scream as he does, waking to the verve of fiery life once more filling their every tributary and waking every cell. He scrabbles against worn stone, hooves lacking purchase and legs lacking the strength they would soon regain.
His foreleg is bent, forehead rested on its rounded, knobbed, self. He groans and tries once more, making it upright but still stumbling as he makes it free of the cave mouth and into the blinding, brilliant, noon sun. His copper and ivory breast stands out, catching the sun and throwing it back as the whole rest of his black figure tries to soak it up, eat it down into darkness. He looks, stares, blinks - still uncomprehending of the ages that have passed him, of the disasters that had seen fit to leave him whole despite his escape inward -- and that is when he seems to still. The same stillness he had once lain in, a seeking stillness one usually sees in prey or in the shock of witnessing some horror.
Then there is a screech - one that the whole world could hear - and Judas’s head snaps around to see the great bird stooping down at his head with open talons and a wild spark of rage in his eyes. "EIR!" He shouts, still hoarse, still more of a bray than a neigh. "I SHOULD HAVE YOUR HIDE STRIPPED BY ONE OF THE MONSTERS THAT THIS PLACE HAS WHELPED IN YOUR ABSENCE, FOOL." The shriek is no less feral, even as the great bird lands on a bough and plucks its talons across the bark enough to chip the tender body beneath free of it’s armor. "Why are you so--- how long has it been?" The expression of sudden realization, of dawning awareness, soothes some of Eir’s savagery against nature.
"Your children’s’ children’s children are gone, Judas. You have outlived your own line. " The bird trills bitterly and with no small dose of venom.