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The Smith
By Fire and Ash my Soul is Undone.

The depths of the night gave way beneath a plethora of seductive calls, hymns of the symphony of cicadas, heralding their rule in a relentless, maddening tone. The sun loved its unconquered glory, brushing away the simple, gentle love of the night lore hours, forgotten beneath the heat, desired as no other for those who bore this trial with hunched shoulders. Arion had come to this place of quiet contemplation, drawn to the golden light of the day, the sigh that came upon all things when the chill of night was brushed aside. In those moments when dawn had not quite vanished, and day tolerated the shared sky, everything was bejewelled with marbled light, a titillating gauze that made even the surety of where he stood appear little more than a dream. The winged insects fluttered amidst this golden mist, their wings appearing as if made of shattered glass, their bodies kissed by dew. Even further, the great swell of the emerald carpet was painted fair, shining and heaving with a living wave, much like the oceans to the east would. A beautiful world indeed. There was beauty to be found in all things, the simplest of solitiude and forgotten treasures, the art painted in splendor by divine hands. Even here, in this meloncholy plane, insequential and simple could become something extrodinary. Eyes of silver and eyes of earth gazed out now, blinded temporarily with the last sigh of dawn, as the sun rose ever higher. The veil of light that had held close to the horizon, the end of the world, vanished, taking with it the last of the dark shadows.

He had abandoned his hallowed bed for no other reason than the silence, and the lack of in the recent days. The court of was flurry with whispers, tensions and interest that went beyond their crumbling walls. Whispers of change, of foreigners who now walked these halls. Arion was such a beast, hailed from afar, unfamiliar and uninterested with the customs of the flock. Laws he could abide by, yet, the traditions, the beliefs that they knelt before the altar for, that they offered prayer too, he could not. It seemed folly to abounded his old gods, folly to abandon his old ways, for diversity had long been a lesson he had come to know, come to hold dear as one would blood kin. That, and it was perhaps the only thing that remained of a life he could barely remember. And yet, for all his devotion to the path set before him, Arion knew he had long left the fate meant for the survivors. When others would return, he had fled, a vagrant eternal. This in itself was the greatest of rebellion. So he walked, and walked, the distance growing further, and his knowledge lessening of the strange world he had come upon. Perhaps it was a mirror realm, one beyond that of mere illusions, strange as it was. Breathing the air, sweetened by nectar and growing things, the smith peered about; a completely ordinary quiet.

Until it wasn't. The song was old, was angered and vibrating in the air. The stallion ceased to move, listening to it, mix-matched eyes drinking in the smells that came with it. The aggression, dark and heavy, and the fear, jolting and flighty. She appeared like a merry fae, bounding in the dancing steps of her kind, only to be chased by the brute, lancing horns of ivory, curving and gnarled. The scent hot with the temperamental desires of male. The gruff horse perhaps would have ignored such a sight, had his soul been darker, tempered by the need for selfishness. The weakness of his mother they said. Nostrils flared with his breath, even as Arion broke out from his shadows at the forest's edge, the heavy strike of his hooves against the earth was a thundering trumpet to his approach. Falling astride the stag, the cervid dwarfed by his grith; he reached, the solid bone of his tusks clashing against its antlers, only to link, and pull, wrenching the beast from its maddened surge. Sounds aplenty fell from its lips, angered, shrieking welts, the beast bowing its crown, shaking as it tried to jolt his hold upon it. Yet, he was stronger, corded by craft, and with a sneer, he reared back his head, drawing the other towards him. A hoof lashed out, scoring its side. It was only after he lifted higher, tugging his tusk from the curl in the stag's antlers that they were unlocked, the stag shifting away, limping from the harsh, cracking reprimand.
"Speak"