TORIELLE
It's only me who wants to wrap around your dreams
My audits twitch as I hear a sweet voice from behind me. The moon is full tonight and so light is easy to come by. Not in golden honey hues like the sun, but as a soft silver glow. I think I’ve always preferred the night, as it is when I have done my best thinking, my deepest work within myself. There are those who thrive in the sunlight, but I have always felt my growth has been best under the cradle of the moon. There is something soothing, healing about her light and gentle touch. If I were to have guessed, she would have sounded much like the curious voice calling to me now.
I turn to face perhaps the most beautiful mare I have ever seen. And that includes the dancers from my home tribe. She is a slight thing, delicate in every way. Even her antlers, decorated with the vines and petals of living things, somehow manage to look weightless upon her forehead. Her mane and tail are wild things, not tangled, no not that, but brushed through with the wind. Her features are punctuated by attractive stripes, creams met with a soft grey-blue and dark accents at her knees and the very edges of her audits. All of these things are beautiful, but I think perhaps what draws me in most, are the striking colour of her eyes. The blue of my own pools are a deep well, but this mare, this porcelain doe, hers are vibrant, struck through with life, and curiosity and kindness. They are as open as the wide summer sky and even in the silver-kissed light of the moon they are like the clearest lake-bed.
I have seen beauty in all her forms, but feel myself go weak at the knees in her presence. I want to drown in her. Not like the lustful drowning I held for the sea mare, the desire to be swallowed and forgotten. No. I want to lose myself under those crystalline gems and see things as she sees them. To see myself through her eyes I may be able to see myself as whole again.
It takes me a moment to realize that I am staring, that perhaps my maw has parted and I am ogling her, agape. How vulgar. But I cannot help but be star struck, and I take a step forward, the words falling from my tongue in a jumble before I can stop myself.
“You must be sent from the goddess herself. Here I am, wishing for an angel, and there you are, suddenly and openly.” I pause, the silence deafening as my mind finally catches up with what’s just happened and if the dark soot coat of my cheeks could have blushed they would have been a bright scarlet. As it is, my ears burn with embarrassment and I quickly look away. The bells strung through the branches of my antlers rattle, swinging violently back and forth.
“I-I… I’m sorry, I’m not sure where that came from…” I stammer, looking anywhere but this vexing creature. Realizing that I am much taller than she -if one were not to count the bone spires perched upon her head- I step back once more, and bend into a heavy bow, my nares nearly touching the ground.
“Forgive me. That’s no way to greet a lovely lady, I must sound like some mad dog…” I prattle on my apology, and I realize this is the first time since my coming to Delumine that I am genuinely flustered.
art by the-day-of-shadow character by scapeh table by sunny
