Nerves led him to hang around the area in which he had recently found himself. Scents were fewer and further between here, although some of that may have been the result of the muggy climate. The way humidity hung thick in the air meant that odors were frequently hidden beneath the musk of watery decay. It was easy to lose your scent when you walked through the waters. Easy for the slick mud to fill in your hoofsteps and rapidly obscure any trace that you were ever there.
It was both a comfort and a curse. Comforting in that the stallion knew that he would be harder to track, but a curse in that it would be more difficult for him to tell if any others had been hanging around the area as well.
He figured that few would tend to stick to the area, and so chose it to be his place of refuge for the time being. Others would most likely be more prone to hanging around the fields he had seen at a distance, or the distant castle that towered above the land. To live in areas of great greenery and soaring grandeur, for who would want to live in a place of uncomfortable humidity, wet boughs, and sticky mud beneath every hoofstep, clinging to your hocks like an inanimate leech?
Auru Geniven would, if for the sole reason that he doubted many others would. That not many would choose to spend the majority of their time hidden amidst the shadows and decay.
But, as he lipped at the fruit of a nearby tree, having reared upon his hindlimbs, forehooves braced against the trunk, a small part of his mind wondered why, and not in a sarcastic way. Sure, perhaps the grasses that grew here were not like those found among rolling fields of flowers, but there were treasures to be found here of a different sort. The man fastened his teeth around the small fruit, slipping his jaws softly along the stem until his teeth rested against the top of the fruit, and he pulled his head back until the fruit was plucked free, stem left behind as his tongue tucked the morsel into his cheek to bite down.
Sweet juices filled his mouth, and copper eyes momentarily lit up just a little bit at the pleasant flavor. As the flesh of the fruit slipped down his throat, the man had no hesitation with shifting his hooves against the tree to give himself additional grip and balance as he stretched to grasp another of the fruits.
For a moment, he forgot about the nerves that chewed at the corners of his mind, the whispers that he was within a Court's lands, and had stayed far longer than he ought. He was a stranger to all, the coward that fled in the night and never returned. The one who never stayed in an area for too long, for then others would know where to find you, would know how to trap you. For a moment he forgot about the whispers of doubt that being 'accepted' into a Court was a lie, a trick. A way to convince a weakling to remain in a place long enough to be taken down, to rid the world of one who didn't have the right to remain in the world with his weak nature.
He forgot about the rebutting whispers that spoke of how he may be tracked down were he to flee, for a traitor was unlikely to be tolerated.
Whispers to stay, whispers to go, for a moment he forgot them all.
Instead, he was distracted by the pleasant, sweet flavor of the fruits that hung above him in the boughs of the tree, the ones that challenged him to test his balance and stubbornness if he wanted to enjoy their taste and texture, to absorb their nutrients into his body. And it was a challenge that he was willing to take, his stomach grumbling contentedly as he fed.
@
OOC: Yay, got it up. :D Bit short for me but I doubt that matters much. ^^
