ira
Ira was barely older than a colt the first time a gentleman in Denocte came to him, saying: You’re the hunting boy, aren’t you?
To which he would say, “Yes, sir.”
And the man would add, “You learn more by hunting animals then you do hunting just about anything else. Let me make you an offer, son—“
It began, like that. His father had begun to ail, and the medications he required for his health were expensive, imported from overseas on vast sailing ships. Ira had been running out of options, and desperate, so that when the man—his name, Turk, still evokes a complicated gnarl of emotions within him—offered a hundred signs just to track a man through Ruris, Ira had agreed.
He had tracked him through Eluetherian Plain, marveling at how clumsy men were compared to beasts. He left traces through every thicket; strands of long russet hair, hoof-prints, a feather from his wing.
(One day, but not that day, the jobs would progress. “Ira, son, I need you to capture a thief” or, “Ira, son, there is a man that must be ki—“)
Ira becomes distracted by the herd of bison in the near distance. He watches them quietly, as a witness and a witness alone. Ira has not come so far from Denocte to hunt bison, but a man—a man.
A thief.
He sees a silhouette nearby, observing the herd from the opposite hillside. Ira cocks his head, but recognizes immediately they do not fit the description of the man he seeks. No, the man he seeks is a pegasus, and the woman across the small valley has no wings. He waits for the bison to continue their passage before loping down the hill and up the other side. She seems preoccupied, and Ira feels regretful to interrupt her concentration. “Excuse me—“ He offers a smile, large and shy and somewhat charming. “Have you seen a man pass about this way? Black as pitch, and winged?”
He knows, in the asking, that she has not. Ira lost the trail a ways back, and he would not be surprised if the pegasus had taken flight.
@Aska / speaks / notes
