DIGGER, LISTENER, RUNNER
PRINCE WITH THE SWIFT WARNING
PRINCE WITH THE SWIFT WARNING
He sees her coming.
How could he not?—how could she not, is the better question. Save for the things obscured behind a drift, one could see a mouse for miles in this place. His bright, eternally mischievous eyes fix on her golden form, the sway of her as she passes through the empty land is like a mirage to him—he could just about lick his lips, if only because it is such a great relief to know he will not die alone. She is locked in thought—that much he can tell—watching her hooves print themselves into the sand. Like two great ships on a golden sea, they sail on a collision course.
He is prepared, of course, to shoulder her for her attention—attention, of course, being something he takes quite a bit of pleasure in—but instead she spies his own neat hooves in her path, and he anchors, a smirk twisting his grey lips. (That smirk—you’d think he would have learned, by now, to take something seriously. You’d have thought something might have wiped the smirk off that cavalier face of his, by now. Not so.
He is enduring in his folly. It’s part of his charm.
It’s part of his armor, too, but anyway...)
You look lost, in some way, she kind of does too, but he doesn’t say that. He could sympathize with her anger; her loss—he had been sent to the brink by his own robbery. That of his body, replaced by one with throat and form most foreign to him. His oversized ears flick and flop on his head, forever leery relics of his old self; his short, soft bob-tail swishes against his well-muscled haunches. He lets her take him in, a strange thing—but certainly not the most strange.
(His smile briefly falters as her pretty, blue eyes pass over the grisly talisman on his chest. A prevailing protectiveness makes it a no-no to so much as a glance into its empty eyes. It is quickly replaced on his lips, but he will remember this transgression.)
“Do I?” he imagines he is not the only one. This place is made to get lost in. “I was actually beginning to think this was home now,” the sarcasm is thick, he looks around for a moment. He knows nothing of the Day Court, of course, having only just passed through Novus’ border but a day or two ago. “And can you really be lost at home?” (You can, actually—he has experienced it well enough.)
“My name is Maximus. And yes, I have no idea where the hell I am.”
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