you shouldn't have to pay for your love
with your bones and your flesh
A hunt, the court whispers amongst each other as he passes, every being pressed close equally for warmth and the gossip it brought. They pay no mind to the deer-like boy with whispers of Solis and his challenge, and those who rose to face it --
a pale stallion, with horns like a bull, someone else whispers, and he thinks of a not-so-lonely night on a mountainside, of an understanding that had almost-but-not-quite been reached between two boys who thought too often about death.
“The Gods don't often give easy quests,” He whispers into the air between them when their paths cross, anxiety humming beneath his skin in a familiar anthem, the dragonscale around his neck gleaming like an oilslick. He knows too well how fickle the favor of the divine could be, how treacherous their hunts and their games would be for the mortals who dared to join in.
He is in amongst the bustle of the market, the newly enlivened Solterrans - though still mournful, many of them - packing together in the cold to talk of the new challenge. El Toro struts proudly through them, his mending scar a testament to the prowess (hush, now, truth) that he intends to show in battle. The white stallion will rage against this threat and bring fire back to this land, return the heat that nearly brought death itself upon him in serpentine form -
”The gods don’t often give easy quests.”
He knew that voice. Where did he - oh. Toro turns his head, searching, until he finally looks down and realizes - yes. Him. The pale antlered boy from the not-shrine.
Him.
”Ah, Anzhelo. Hello!” His eyes dart away, their last conversation slithering against his skin like millipedes. In another moment, he realizes what it is Anzhelo has said. ”Oh. Yeah. I’m sure you’re right. But a hunt is a hunt, isn’t it?”
you shouldn't have to pay for your love
with your bones and your flesh
He watches the stallion with seaglass eyes that shift from green to blue and back again in the right light, watches the way he postures and shows off a still-healing scar as though it will protect him from the games that the Gods played, and his heart aches at the thought of such a life being snuffed out like a candle in the wind.
He also knows that there is nothing that will keep El Toro out of the desert hunt, can see it shining in his eyes. “A hunt issued by a God is a trick,” and he thinks of the hunt that had ended with a dragon, of the neat lines of scarring behind one rounded ear from the spikes on the dragon’s tail, the hunt that they’d been promised wouldn’t be dangerous.
How many times had he almost died from the promises of a deity?
”A hunt issued by a god is a trick.”
Toro would’ve snorted had it been anyone else. Instead he shrugs, too confident, too proud, too naive, but just aware enough of the boy before him. ”Will you be careful?” The question catches him off guard, the concern trickling through the cracks in his walls as kindness is prone to do. Toro picks up a hoof a plops it back down, not quite a stamp, no, a thinking thump. He sighs. He can’t think of a time when he has ever been careful, he always forgets about it when he ought to. He looks away and back at Anzhelo, before saying, ”Sure. I’ll remember you when I’m slaying foul beasts, and dodge their cruel horns.” He smirked and lowered his head, showing off the two curling horns that grew out from his skull. ”I’ve got a pair of my own, you know.” With a swish he rises back up, grinning. ”You’ve even got some antlers yourself. Don’t you worry about me.”I’m not worth it.
you shouldn't have to pay for your love
with your bones and your flesh
He considers the taller stallion for a moment, his heart aching at how easily brave the other man is, how carelessly naive he might just be. He wonders if the other man has ever felt the sharp edges of shattered dreams, and he hopes that he has not -- he doesn’t want to imagine that crooked smile falling from Toro’s mouth, or the light ever leaving his bright eyes.
How can he put into words his worst fears, when the man before him stands so blissfully alive -- how can he be so afraid for someone he has barely met?
“I’ve never used them for fighting,” He admits softly, tilting his head up further so that he can look somewhere in the vicinity of Toro’s eyes, the light catching against the jewels that decorate the bone and the scar that slashes across his delicate muzzle, against the scale that rests against his neck, and he’s given an idea.
“Take this,” His stumbling telekinesis gently grasps the scale from around his neck, unwinding the silver chain and holding it out for Toro to place around his neck. “It’s a scale from a dragon…. It’ll protect you.” He wasn’t sure how the enchantment upon the scale would work for the bull-horned stallion, but he could only hope that it would -- and that Toro would come back to him in one piece.
OH I DON'T WANNA DO THE SLEEP TALK BABY, WAKE UP AND TELL ME WHAT YOU MEAN
”I’ve never used them for fighting.” And Toro wants to say, hah, I can tell, but he shies away because he thinks it will hurt. (Since when did it matter what hurt?) Toro catches Anzhelo’s eyes for a moment, gaze glancing along the jewels and bone and thinking that, perhaps, their blood is not so different. In concept, at least.
No. We’re different. It is easy to be fooled by glitter and bone.
”Take this.” The scale at Anzhelo’s neck floats up and over his horns and Toro frowns. ”It’s a scale from a dragon… it’ll protect you.”
Toro stares at him. He wants to step back back back back but why—
”You…for…it’s for me? I - uh, I couldn’t. I mean. It’s yours. What if I die? You won’t get it back. I mean, I’d give it back, if I took it, but I shouldn’t. Don’t you want it? You should be protected. You said you don’t fight. I fight. I can protect myself, if you can’t, who’s going to protect you, Anzhelo?” The words spill out of his mouth and he wants so hard for them to stop but he thinks all of these things and they show up out loud in the space between the stallions because this thing Anzhelo is doing is wrong, so wrong -
No no no no no no no not for me not for me not for me
For when was the last time he had been given anything but spit and tears?
you shouldn't have to pay for your love
with your bones and your flesh
His grip on the necklace only becomes more sure as Toro protests, fastening the delicate chain so that the iridescent scale falls just-so in the center of Toro’s chest. Perhaps the horned man might have no need of lended courage -- perhaps he has too much of his own -- but it is a gesture the antlered man will make nonetheless.
“No one has ever protected me,” There’s something soft and sad and vulnerable in the shape of those words on his tongue, but the corner of his lips pulls up into a smile that defies everything he has just said, forms a secret between the two of them. For a moment, he is the boy whose father might have wanted him at one time, a man who might still pray to gods who listened to his pleas -- for a moment, he is not broken but he is golden beneath the sun.
“I’m still standing, aren’t I?”
Today, he isn’t a boy with constellations of bruises across his skin, and he dares to step forward and brush his muzzle across Toro’s cheek, as light as a breath of wind.
Toro falls silent as the necklace reaches over him and falls gently against his chest.
Anzhelo says, ”No one has ever protected me,” and El Toro-
El Toro wants to protect him.
And Anzhelo smiles. Anzhelo, who wants to throw himself off a cliff, Anzhelo, who no one has thought worthy of protecting-
”I’m still standing, aren’t I?” and the little stag reaches up to brush his lips against Toro’s cheeks.
A kiss.
A folk hero.
The hero, the boon, the lover.
The what?
”I trust you to return it.” Toro swims through the clouds in his thoughts, and nods, feeling his telepathy press the scale to his chest, just for a moment. ”Thanks,” he half-croaks, half-whispers. El Toro dips his head and turns away, and disappears into the crowd.
