He wasn't sure why he ran.
Perhaps it was simply that he had spent too long in one place, and the need to run, to be an everwandering nomad again, if only for a few days, was simply too much to bare. So much, that the only way to drive it out was to pound hooves against the landscape until he feared they would splinter and shatter beneath his weight should he dare to take a single step more.
He wasn't sure where he was headed, or why, in fact, in retrospect, he would look back upon this day and find it within himself to wonder if it really had been something planned, some force of the gods that led this to happen, Vespera's will, or simply happenstance. He had been here before, once or twice, he could not be sure.
The shrines didn't mean much to a child, and he was far more preoccupied with the shiny stones and fun caves that were scattered about than any form of worship. And he had never returned since, never finding within him the want or even the simple idea of doing so.
But it seemed that his hooves still remembered the paths required to bring him across the Steppe as swift as was able, the mane of a lion buffeting behind him he ran into the summer winds so swiftly, the gale tearing at him and for but one moment, making him almost appear regal. Teeth bared to reveal the mighty canines and wolf teeth that gave the somewhat small male an air about him that for but one moment, if this was the only glance you ever had of his form, you might speculate that he was a lion in an equine's body, a mighty king of the wild.
But then he found himself stumbling up the mountain paths, climbing higher, higher, ever higher, and one could once again see the weakness that ever pervaded his form, the exhaustion written so clearly in his eyes. The shimmer every now and then of desperate tears that wanted to cascade down his form, because he was simply so overwhelmed by it all that his visage found itself contorted as he huddled upon a ledge of the mountainside, crying quietly to himself for no reason other than to cry. And the image of any sort of king was quickly quashed beneath the young man, almost still a boy, 's crushing fear of the world.
But higher and higher he still climbed, dried tear tracks marring his brown coat, mane matted and in desperate need of grooming and coat quite scruffy. He looked like a veritable mess, and one had to wonder why he would run so far from his home in search of nothing that he knew he was searching for, and if you asked, you would hear nothing, but perhaps the quiet whimpers of 'I don't have a home, so what's the point?'
But even if the words were true, he still didn't know why he ran. The swamp may not be his home, because he didn't know if he even deserved one (why would you you pathetic piece of shit), but it was still the place he intended to return to when this trek was done. It was still the place he was going to go back to in an attempt to hide among a place that could perhaps offer some comfort in familiarity.
So he still didn't know why he ran.
Why did he run from it?
Why did he burn through what energy he had in a desperate race against nothingness to get to these lands?
He didn't know.
He never would.
But perhaps that wasn't what was important.
For as the small, young man, weary from his journey, unkempt from anxiety and distress, and with dried tear tracks running down his face simply because everything was too much, crested the lip which brought him to the highest point upon the mountain, he found two things simultaneously.
One, before him lay the shrines he distantly remembered from his youth. Places to worship the gods, overgrown with wildlife but beautiful in their disrepair. And he felt his lips turn up for but a moment, some distant, genetic memory of love for the gods causing him to feel a short flicker of compassion and worship for this sight, one beautiful in its own way, in the love with which it had been crafted.
Two, he wasn't alone.
And yet, perhaps it was the fact that he was still momentarily overcome by the view of the shrines before him, he was not frightened by that fact.
The soft tint of dawn, as soft as a baby rose's touch to one's lips, was just a whisper upon the horizon as his gaze fell upon the woman. The strength in her body was clear, and perhaps it ought to have frightened him away as it did in his encounters with the one who ruled him, but there was something far more overpowering in her form that drove away any nervousness at being in the presence of another who was so much stronger than he.
Hooves clacked lightly against stone as he approached, not looking at the woman directly and instead allowing his gaze to roam freely over the shrines. He came to stand near her, not quite touching, but calmly at her side.
It was strange, really. How quickly emotions could change.
Less than an hour ago, he was crying from a confusing mixture of fear and general distress.
Moments ago, he was soothed and calmed by feelings of love for something greater than he could ever imagine.
And now... now it felt like his heart was being crushed, so overwhelmed was he by some sort of sorrow he knew not, feeling like it was trying to break him from the inside out as it clenched its claws tighter and tighter around his chest as he looked about the shrines, and to the woman next to him who seemed... so very similar to he, in her own way.
His broken gaze, now glimmering with raw, unshed tears of grief for something he could not quite understand, was turned back to the shrines for which he had brought nothing, and his voice was just as broken as it was quiet in it's whispered query to the other equine.
"Are you lonely, too?"
And he'd never even realized he was until the words were already past his lips. And he didn't even recognize the broken whisper for his own until he had to close his mouth after speaking.
@
OOC: Just allow me to roll on in. ;) I also lost where I was going like halfway through this so
