G A R E T H
The winter’s biting chill had finally forced the stallion down from the mountains. His elk companion had been urging him for weeks now as the nights became cool and the wind whistled through the trees. The brute hadn’t wanted to listen to him. After the first month, he had left disappointed. A week later, though, he had been back and it had been with provisions to stay. The stallion’s heart ached to see her again, and each night he had stood at the entrance to the cave, hoping to see her visage materialize from the darkness, just as it once had. Gareth was a stubborn man, and once he had set his mind to something it was difficult to get him to focus on anything else. Some would consider it bullheadedness, and perhaps they were right. It served him well, in most things. But in matters of the heart, all it would do, it seems, is make him bitter and lonely.
Noor had thought that this final rejection after sudden and fleeting hope would break him. And while the stallion was perhaps not yet ready to admit it, the elk could see the cracks forming, and the guards being carefully built around his heart. It pained him to see his friend hurting this way, even though he had been correct. No one ever wins in those situations- no one wants to tell the ones that they love that they are going to be hurt, and they certainly don’t celebrate when their predictions turn true. Noor, perhaps almost as much as Gareth, had been hoping that Salome would show herself. That they could speak and, if nothing else, make amends. When she had not come the first time, he had tried to get his stallion companion to move on, but once that light of hope was inside of him, he could not let it go. Noor knew that he had to let the man come to conclusions on his own, even if it meant that he would have to fall apart.
But the elk would be there, as he always had. He would be the stallion’s silent rock, and he would help him shoulder whatever weight, and he would help him piece himself together again. That is what friends did. That is what one’s chosen family did. And fuck Salome, if she was too full of herself to see that. If her head was too in the clouds or far and away somewhere else, to toy with the gentle giant. To so deeply hurt a man who clearly still loved her after all of these years… it was a disgrace as far as he was concerned. But he would not voice those thoughts to Gareth. Perhaps he never could. It would wound him too much, and he had already been through enough. He watched the stallion, who walked just a bit ahead of him, shoulders hunched against the cold, so much like a child trying to curl into himself and disappear from the world that was far too big.
They were walking in the shadow of the mountain now, but it would still be a good half day at least until they would reach home. The snow here was, blessedly, sparse. He had let his mane down from the semi-neat buns that he normally kept to attempt to warm his neck. The strands fell in thick locks, whispering against his skin all of the sweet nothings that he had so wished to hear from lips not his own.
The stallion tried to push the thought from his mind and Gareth wondered briefly if anyone had missed him these last few months. After all, he had gone to the mountains just before the new Sovereign was named. He wondered what the final tally had been, and how the chips had fallen. He supposed in the end it didn’t matter much. He had never been one to play too much with politics, and found that most rulers were all variations of the same. He pushed air harshly through his nares, the action nearly causing him a coughing fit. He had spent much too long on the mountain, and he knew that. Noor had known it, too, but the stallion was too pigheaded to agree. He had been too desperate, perhaps. He had wanted so strongly to believe… But hope was a fickle bitch, and perhaps an aching lung would be a well deserved lesson what foolishness blind hope can bring a man.
