[P] gold teeth and a curse for this town;

[Sarkan]

Sarkan The moral of the tale is this: whoever allows himself to be whipped, deserves to be whipped.   If he knew what lay ahead, how similarly the two situations would play out, the fact that both confrontations involved kings of Delumine - he might have made different choices. (Knowing the end, of course, he would not have set foot into this forest at all). But of course Sarkan was no seer, no dreamer of prophetic dreams, just a man who filled a need for richer men. Caution was written plainly as daylight across the dunalino’s face, but it was the tip of his horn the Percheron watched, waiting for a waver, a clue of which direction it might point. It was winter-quiet between their words, the vapor of their breaths nearly mingling as they surveyed the snare between them, and one another over the top if it. Later, in another part of the forest, Sarkan would use his knife to cut through another of his snares; now he kept it sheathed at his side, ever aware of its presence. Why ruin his tools? Not yet, he thought; as long as this man played along, he would too, and then move south for a few weeks. Maybe explore that island he’d heard whispers of, see what new kinds of game it offered. “First I’ve seen close up,” he lied, not smiling at the compliment that was rigged rather expertly. The gray made a show of following the glinting wire to its anchor, a young oak who trunk was the width of a fist. Like the alicorn he leaned forward to study it. It would be easier, he knew, to spring the trap and disengage it from there, but he wanted to make a show of it. “You might stand back,” he said, glancing over, then turned a half-circle, his muzzle wrinkling in annoyance at undoing his own work. For a moment he measured the tree over his shoulder, then kicked out once, twice, a third time at the base of the sapling. The woods rang out with the sound of the contact, and the trunk splintered and crushed in, the bare branches falling into the dried briars and silent snow. The noose fell too, a limp circle in the grass, harmless as a dead snake. “There,” he said. “That’s one gone, anyway. I can take it home, see about destroying it.” His gaze settled again on the dunalino, blue as a winter day. @Somnus