hallelujah
i found
jesus when
i drowned;

TUCSON

because regret drives you as crazy
as the taste of swallowed words

ucson arrives at the Steppe like a one-man stampede. 

.


He is anger and dust and fury. The tension of the air is held just beneath his wings so that, when he tucks them just so, he descends from the sky with swift violence. The earth nears him recklessly and Tucson hits the ground at a lope to keep his momentum from flinging him face-first into the ground. The shock of the impact goes up his knees into his shoulders and then, accordingly, his hips. It hurts and for a moment, brief and inconsequential, he feels his age. 

Then the moment is gone and the stallion tosses his head, snorting. He does not know why he is angry. There is only a steady stream of the sentiment, and it comes from the night before when he had, perhaps, one too many drinks. The tavern he frequented had kicked him out, again, and he stumbled back to the soldier’s output sodden drunk. There was a sharp edge to his anger, and an even sharper one to his recklessness. The words of his commanding officer were resonant in his mind. You piece of shit… You’re the opposite of what a Terrastellan is supposed to be.

Tucson was finding out more and more he wasn’t cut out to be a soldier. How could he explain, babbling drunk, the only thing he’d ever learned how to do was kill? How could he say, I don’t know what I’m supposed to be if I’m not just a wandering vagabond? Those words were too much for him, too large, and his mind could not comprehend nor articulate the complicated sentiments that now plagued him. Tucson had never been taught the emotional intricacies of loneliness, or fear, or heartache. Everything he had ever felt could be answered with a bottle of bourbon or violence, and Daisy Mae came to him more and more often in him dreams, saying: You gotta stop suppressin’ Tucson, it ain’t right, y’gotta talk about it hon. Talk to me.

Tossing his head, breathing in the bright summer air—he thought of that. Talk to me. And all the words he wished he could say die in his chest before he can even think them, because it is unattractive to feel things so volatile, so brazen, so full. The only way to let the fullness out of his chest was to feel something else and so now he seeks it like an addict. Tucson looks around with his bright amber eyes and locks them on the only other figure at the Steppe—the bay with spotted wings. He recognises her as the new sovereign, a word as foreign to him as the land he lives in now.

“Ay’ there, lass.” he calls over the space between them. “Looks t’me like we could do each other a'favour.” And wasn’t that the truth? He bowed his head in a way that is almost mischievous, if not for how sharp the gesture is. As he bows he says, “Let’s dance, sweets.” 

TUCSON

he disappeared without a word
but the next night a coyote was heard

ucson cannot help himself. 

A grin, broad and infectious, bursts across his face. “Aw, sweetheart, dancin’ is th’ only way to describe it.” 

He loves her, if only because she doesn’t waste any time. If he could hear her thoughts, he might be a little less inclined to think so kindly of her—if only because he would reverently, aggressively disagree. Fighting was about the only romantic thing Tucson knew, besides love-making, and of the two one certainly had less dramatic outcomes. He finds himself watching, weighing her strengths and weaknesses, and all he can find is that she looks less like a horse and more like a weapon.

When she charges, Tucson is ready, and he laughs loud and long and joyously. His squared stance is replaced by a much lighter one but he does expect her to hit him squarely, just as she charges; at the last second she dips to the side and rams her shoulder against his own. Tucson finds himself reeling for a moment, and if not such an acrobatic in the air and on land, he would have tumbled. As it were, he stumbles heavily and is saved a full-on fall only by throwing out the wing farthest from her assault. One of his knees hits the ground and skids—but then Tucson is up, and lunging toward her. 

His reaction is instantaneous and fierce; Tucson does not play pretty. He saves only a moment to think, damn, that hurts, before he is pivoting on a hind-leg toward her and rising, simultaneously, into a rear. The goal is to close whatever distance she has recreated and, if she is launching a second attack, to parry it through an offensive of his own. Tucson aims to land the majority of his weight on whatever body part is available, churning his hooves mid-air as sharp, hard weapons and hook them around whatever he can reach. Close, close, close. It is the way Tucson fights. 

And still, he cannot help himself. ”Y’keep bein’ sweet t’me and I’m gonna have’ta ask’a for a second date."

MARISOL
- Participate in a Battle or Challenge: +1 EXP
- Win a Battle: +1 additional EXP
-- Total: +2 EXP to Marisol

TUCSON
- Forfeits do not allow you to gain EXP for participating in a Battle.
-- Total: 0 EXP to Tucson