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.   Maybe he should have said since. But Sarkan had been ignorant of the meaning she took from it, as ignorant as he was of her stare and the way it pressed into him as though wishing her horn was instead. There may have been a burn at his back (the kind from ice, not fire), but the only true threat was the witch-grass before them, and that held the bulk of the stallion’s attention. He didn’t think  they would do anything - but he wanted to be ready if they did. A gray ear twisted toward Aspara as she spoke, and to his credit his lip didn’t twitch at the Excuse me. For a moment his gaze shifted to touch on the unicorn, and then the wolf, and he felt the change as they did - the feeling of it, if not the words or the laughter. It might have been better, that he didn’t hear what they wanted. Sarkan had no magic of his own. Although - It only occurred to him when she said I think we should go that maybe she was speaking to the flowers (or the fairies) and he simply hadn’t heard, hadn’t seen the change, because of his cloak. As she thanked them he tugged it swiftly off, and then the girl took a step backward. Sarkan did not crouch quite as the wolf did when the ground shuddered beneath them and the flowers all dipped, in what the stallion took as a bow until they began to melt and brown and die. He did shift his weight, and raise his knife, and turn his head so that he spoke over his shoulder. “That’s a very good idea-“ He got no further than that before the thorns came, and worse than them the eyes. His grunt came at the same time as Aspara’s cry. Sarkan generally kept his head well in such invigorating moments. But at the end of the day, his quarry was only animals with animal thoughts - to eat, to mate, to rear young, and all the behaviors allowing these - and not spirits. He could not anticipate their actions or their desires. Though at the moment they were not unclear. Happily, neither was how best to handle them. At once he knife was flashing, near humming in his grip as it hewed through sinuous wood like it was simple twine. Now he heard the meadow seem to cry out in loamy voices, and he smiled to himself. The arms withdrew and Sarkan whirled toward the girl and her wolf. A gesture of his mind and the blade was falling hungry on the roots. “As soon as you can,” he said over the saw of it, “run.” And he, he thought, gritting his teeth as the blade snapped through one root and turned to another, would be right behind. This was no entity that had anything he could use. @Aspara  <3