come with me into the field of sunflowers

[Sarkan]

Sarkan The moral of the tale is this: whoever allows himself to be whipped, deserves to be whipped.   Other things talk, she said, matter of factly, as though no one had ever disagreed with her. Perhaps they hadn’t. Maybe in Novus everything had a mind, and all the rocks spoke at a decibel Sarkan just couldn’t hear. That would be terrible, given his line of work. He nodded obligingly, the way a grandfather would. In his mind, anything that could speak could also lie - but he wasn’t going to the one to pass the lesson on to this blue-eyed girl. That’s what parents were for. Assuming she had them, and not just the wolf, both like and unlike any wolf Sarkan had seen before. Maybe the tales of the island had grown bigger than the truth of it, if this yearling was exploring it alone. And that was the way of sailor’s stories. Yet the Percheron was still straining to hear a voice from the thorns, like he was Moses. She listened attentively, as good an audience as any story-teller could want, and this charmed him. At her answer (and the wolf’s answering huff, which he found interesting) he quirked a brow, catching her eye. “Not from the stories I was told. I heard it’s taken lives.” Though in the stories it had been a jungle, humid and close. Then his expression softened, a smile turning up the corner of his scruffy cheek. “As for strangers, I’m glad you have your friend here. Though I’ve met far more good people than bad.” When she gave her name he dipped his head as though introduced to a princess. “Sarkan,” he offered solemnly in return, before shaking his head at her question. “I’m not sure, but you should hope not. My run-in was a continent away, in a land called Rukh-” he might have gone on then, since she seemed to enjoy his stories; but all of a sudden color began to bleed into the thorns, and they began to straighten, and shed their razor edges, and turn soft-petaled and golden. And though he swore he watched the change, the time between the thorns and sunflowers was less than a heartbeat, as though the former had never been.  Still silent, they swayed like a giant hand was passing over them. Sarkan was not often speechless, but he found nothing on his tongue now but cold, clear air that tasted of ice. A moment later and he’d stepped forward, until he was just in front of the unicorn, his telekinesis nudging her behind him like a hand on her shoulder. On his other side, his knife was out, white-bladed in the reflection of the flat winter light. “If you can talk to them,” he said calmly, not yet taking his eyes off the riot of color, “can you ask them what they want?” @Aspara  <3