I started keeping a clean head
intellectual eloquence / but you wouldn't believe that
Summer filled the prairies with life. The grass grew taller than some equines, bountiful and fluffy, in shades from emerald green to butter gold. Gentle slopes shaped the flow of the land as they angled into each other, ruffled here and there by thick groups of tall trees that reminded Kassandra of eyebrows. It was fun to imagine Sideralis was the face of a giant being who made up the world and everything in it, and Kas was walking along his eyelashes in the long grass. It felt more physical and corporeal than this talk of gods and Tempus and abstract concepts of divinity, and yet the world was always theirs and never hers.
Perhaps thinking they lived on the face of a giant was childish. Growing up, growing old, and maturity were all concepts Kassandra was struggling with; she felt she should be more adult without knowing, exactly, what that entailed. Psychologically, the early years of her youth had been stolen from her and so with that development gone she would always be slightly behind. But who really defined what it meant to grow, and be grown? Was is the trees, who grew all their lives until they splintered and fell under their own weight? Or the grass and it’s cycles of sprouting up and limping over? Was it the sprouts of Creeping Jenny and their tiny, yellow flowers, fighting up through the grass shoots only to be defeated and trodden down, or munched upon by some unknowing cervine?
Kas stepped over a brook, about a foot wide from bank to bank, and let one of her hind hooves draw through the pleasant summer water. The wind is sweet in the switchgrass and the sky above is clotted with gray clouds; they are false prophets, their bellies blue-gray with rain that refuses to fall.
There’s a distant whoosh and then something goes speeding by her, Oculos hard on its trail as the hound tosses up clods of silt and grass, paws gripping the earth so hard with his strides even his dewclaws furrow the ground. The rabbit, Kassandra realizes, bobs and weaves in a serpentine escape pattern, but it is no match for Oculos, as he was meant to bring wolves to bay, and his heart is full of the joy of the chase and hunt.
“Oculos,” she scolds, her voice quiet on the wind but loud in his head, as such is their bond. “Don’t kill it, please.” The response in her own brain is a flat line of red instinct and the vague feeling of jubilation.
Kassandra sighs and hangs her head; there comes a small ping of acknowledgment at the back of her mind and she breathes a little easier.
Oculos, meanwhile, is churning up earth as he speeds after the hare; so focused on the hunt and thrill of the run he doesn't realize, as he is speeding up a hill after his quarry, he is about to run straight into the hind end of--
oof,
Oculos' neck is jarred and he stumbles back, shaking his head. His vision is slightly blurry, opening his eyes painful, but he falls on his rump and looks up and--
a-- giant-- white bear? he murmurs, his voice a whine. He sits there, looking confused for a moment, before the implications fall on him like a summer thunderstorm and he leaps up with a yelp. a giant white bear!
And, in staying with Oculos form, instead of turning on his heel and running like any sane creature should, he dances on excited feet and yells, kass! kass! come see this!
She is at the bottom of the hill now, looking up towards his jubilant yelps, and her ears perk forward as she gasps in wonder. "Oh! Oh! Hello!" she calls, making her way up the slope.
Both of them are completely unafraid; they've not the sense to fear, and are entirely too curious to tilt towards trepidation.
Perhaps thinking they lived on the face of a giant was childish. Growing up, growing old, and maturity were all concepts Kassandra was struggling with; she felt she should be more adult without knowing, exactly, what that entailed. Psychologically, the early years of her youth had been stolen from her and so with that development gone she would always be slightly behind. But who really defined what it meant to grow, and be grown? Was is the trees, who grew all their lives until they splintered and fell under their own weight? Or the grass and it’s cycles of sprouting up and limping over? Was it the sprouts of Creeping Jenny and their tiny, yellow flowers, fighting up through the grass shoots only to be defeated and trodden down, or munched upon by some unknowing cervine?
Kas stepped over a brook, about a foot wide from bank to bank, and let one of her hind hooves draw through the pleasant summer water. The wind is sweet in the switchgrass and the sky above is clotted with gray clouds; they are false prophets, their bellies blue-gray with rain that refuses to fall.
There’s a distant whoosh and then something goes speeding by her, Oculos hard on its trail as the hound tosses up clods of silt and grass, paws gripping the earth so hard with his strides even his dewclaws furrow the ground. The rabbit, Kassandra realizes, bobs and weaves in a serpentine escape pattern, but it is no match for Oculos, as he was meant to bring wolves to bay, and his heart is full of the joy of the chase and hunt.
“Oculos,” she scolds, her voice quiet on the wind but loud in his head, as such is their bond. “Don’t kill it, please.” The response in her own brain is a flat line of red instinct and the vague feeling of jubilation.
Kassandra sighs and hangs her head; there comes a small ping of acknowledgment at the back of her mind and she breathes a little easier.
Oculos, meanwhile, is churning up earth as he speeds after the hare; so focused on the hunt and thrill of the run he doesn't realize, as he is speeding up a hill after his quarry, he is about to run straight into the hind end of--
oof,
Oculos' neck is jarred and he stumbles back, shaking his head. His vision is slightly blurry, opening his eyes painful, but he falls on his rump and looks up and--
a-- giant-- white bear? he murmurs, his voice a whine. He sits there, looking confused for a moment, before the implications fall on him like a summer thunderstorm and he leaps up with a yelp. a giant white bear!
And, in staying with Oculos form, instead of turning on his heel and running like any sane creature should, he dances on excited feet and yells, kass! kass! come see this!
She is at the bottom of the hill now, looking up towards his jubilant yelps, and her ears perk forward as she gasps in wonder. "Oh! Oh! Hello!" she calls, making her way up the slope.
Both of them are completely unafraid; they've not the sense to fear, and are entirely too curious to tilt towards trepidation.
