TORIELLE
It's only me who wants to wrap around your dreams
The mare watched as he moved his girth to block the breeze that ran across the open field, shielding her with his body in the process. A sigh parted her sooty lips and she relaxed slightly, not having realized how cold it had been. “Thank you,” she murmured, ears pricked forward to catch his response to her query.
She cocked her head, the jewels that nestled in her mane and wove through her antlers clanging against each other with the movement. Her expression was one of mild confusion, before one painted brow lifted. He spoke many words without giving much information at all, though she wasn’t sure she blamed him. One did not often reveal their true nature to strangers, even if he had chosen to answer her question in a more broad manner. She got the sense that he was a direct man, and though his sentences were curt, they were not rude, exactly.
“That is quite a reason,” the mare responded. “Though I believe the deserts of this land are in quite the opposite direction,” she mused, her tone light.
At his own questioning she cast her gaze out over the empty meadow, his approach having shattered her imagination. It felt colder, now, without her visions of home to comfort her, though the sun still stroked her spine as Solis did his best to warm her. Torielle breathed a heavy sigh, the cold air filling her dappled chest and calling ice to her veins. She stepped closer to the mountain of a stallion, enjoying the warmth that radiated from him and the shelter he provided from another stiff breeze as it moved across the snow.
“Curiosity,” she finally answered, returning her azure pools to his own. “There’s tell of a festival to be held here once the spring takes hold, and I had wanted to see the grounds.” Her audits swiveled listening to the distant call of winter birds.
“Like you, I have been drawn to these lands, and I am…” She searched for the right term, wondering how much she should tell this strange beast who reminded her of home, but she knew to be anything but. “Unfamiliar with them. I had thought it best to survey them before the festivities transformed them.”
Before reality did not meet the expectation of fantasy. Before she was struck again with how much Novus was not like her beloved Amayal. Before she would have to face the truth that she would never dance with the traditions of her people, that friends and family of her former life were lost to her forever. She made an effort to hide the sorrow brewing in her chest by motioning to the far edge of the clearing.
“Should we move to a more sheltered location? I’m afraid my bones are not accustomed to standing around in the cold like this.” She chuckled. “I’m from a tribe of travelers and mountaineers, but the openness of this place seems to encourage the cold far more than the trees.”
art by the-day-of-shadow character by scapeh table by sunny
