Martin had never seen a bison before in his life.
In the autumn following his first naming day, a wandering minstrel had come out of the south to visit the vale and regale its residents with tales of the world beyond Blackjaw Peak's protective shadow. She sang lays of epic battles and glorious riches, and interlaced in her vivid stories were morsels about the creatures themselves that called such distant places home. In her description of these exotic animals, she employed a trick of vague comparative language that, to this day, he had not quite fully understood.
The gilded unicorn had proceeded east through the Dawn Court lands, leaving its meadows and forests behind to fully explore the land that would become his new home. Eluetheria Plain appeared to him like very much a sister of the florid Illuster Meadow - less colorful, perhaps, but no less vast - with bigger skies and an impression of vastness only accentuated by the dark shapes meandering across the landscape. Compared to the great grass sea they grazed, the animals looked small, and it wasn't until he got a bit nearer that he gained a full appreciation of what he was actually seeing.
Bison are big, children. Bigger than you would imagine. Are you picturing it now? Yes, they're even bigger than that.
Suddenly, everything the minstrel said made a hell of a lot more sense.
Martin had indeed imagined them to be very big, and in the arrogance of his youth was absolutely certain that he couldn't possibly misjudge them, because he was smart enough to make sure his mental image of a buffalo was extra big. These wandering hills of fur and sinew were beyond his adolescent self's comprehension and nearly still beyond it now. He jigged briefly in place before giving the nearest of the creatures a wide birth, muscles taut in case the lumbering beast - a bull that had turned its massive head to fix him with a beady-eyed look - decided he was a threat.
That was about when he noticed the young painted mare observing the bison at a safe distance. Lashing his tail to shed a bit of the energy humming electrically through his flesh, Martin circled back toward her. The bison had already seen fit to ignore his accidental intrusion and return to their grazing.
"That's not at all what I was expecting," he said more to himself than to her, his face flushed. "I haven't interrupted anything, have I?"
@Johari
