I'm ready to bleed to make amends
And sleep in this dirt we call our bed
So tell me your secrets
And join me in pieces
To fall and rewrite the bitter end
The sound of a voice directly over him snapped him from his internal monolog. He opened his eyes and trembled at the sight of the adult above him. He tested one leg at a time, his wings trembling from the effort. “I think….” “I think…I’m alive.” He coughed with a wheeze. “Unless you’re an angel?” He tilted his head to the side, he’d never seen a horse with deep silver blue eyes before. He wheezed further “But I suppose an angel wouldn’t need to bury me; but I don’t think that's necessary just yet”.
His instincts were yelling at him to roll over, to get the right way up, to get back on his feet. Everything hurt, his skin was thin and covered in scrapes and bruises. The effort of trying to roll side to side to get himself rolled over resulted in another wave of shaking. He sighed softly “The mountain exploded with fiery anger; it’s my fault really”. He felt ashamed to admit it, but he knew that his herd blamed the eruption on his failure to take off.
Trembling further he heaved himself to his side, pieces of his skin peeled and stuck to the grass. He coughed and wheezed, with rapid sharp breaths. His entire body felt raw and hot. He coughed again and a cloud of soot went flying from his nostrils. His family had spoken of an afterlife at times - but to reach it, one had to be able to fly. It was said that any in the herd that died would fly upwards into the sun to escape their worldly bodies. Being unable to fly Aeon was very much grounded in this life and the next.
This stallion was as tall as many of the winged ones he grew up with. The blackened face and lack of wings made Aeon draw some conclusions. “Did you lose your wings and get burnt by something too?” maybe this was the land where those who failed to thrive were ejected to. It seemed the stallion had survived something of his own trial, Aeon's eyes looking over the scars on his legs.
ooc: @Buchanan
