The wind nipped at his hide with a chill that ran through to the bone. It was times like these where he truly wished he had taken on his father’s genetics, whatever they were. He had no idea the specifics, truly, though his mother (piss on her soul) had always said he was some towering draft type, with the thickest girth and thickest feathering her (wretched) eyes had ever seen. He’d gotten no such luck, taking on a majority of her Appaloosa traits; save for a stockier structure and minor fluff at his fetlocks you’d never guess. He really should have taken the blanket from that merchant cart he had seen before attempting to pass through the mountains, though theft had never been in his nature.
Now he was regretting the decision to listen to his better moral compass. (Such a foolish thing, anyways) The climb through the peaks had left him nearly frozen, though he had been lucky not to encounter more than just the winds. Had it begun to snow he might have given up all together, hidden in a cave until spring. Still, the stallion had made a decision and he was as stubborn as they came and it took a lot for him to go back once his mind was set, even if part way through he realized that perhaps it wasn’t the most well thought-through of ideas. Besides, he had almost made it through the pass. He could see in the distance that the slopes were becoming more gradual, and beyond that, the way became flat. Thank the gods for flat.
He had decided to make his way through the pass based on the idle chatter he had picked up from traversing the rest of the land. He had come in on some port he had long since forgotten; cities weren’t exactly his strong suit (civilized places are whores nests of the weak anyways) and he had made his way south. He wanted to get as far away from any place that reminded him of home. At first he had thought that he would have been well suited to those that worshiped the Sun. After all, he had been raised a soldier of sorts, and he would have slipped right into place without batting a lash. That had scared him the more he thought about it, how much his mother (spit in her eye) would have adored them. He wanted to get as far away from anything and anyone that woman would have idolized.
That was when he had come across tales of the Night. An outcast of a goddess, a soul who had been worried and then consumed by the darkness placed in her, who had overcome and carved out a place for all the misfit creatures of the land. He thought that he might be able to get on with them just fine. And even if he didn’t they were far and away from the other lands and that was just as good; they ran the potential of being too much like home, and that was the last thing he had traveled worlds to find.
Was he running from his home, or himself? Who knew; probably both, if he were honest. But honesty had always been a difficult thing for him. He’d been taught lies and deceit, and he had been taught it all very well. He could rarely be honest with others, or himself. Perhaps he was afraid of what he would find if he were to get too honest, too quickly. Oh well, one step at a time. That was something that he had mastered by now.
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Word Count: 610
Muse: I'm rusty, please forgive
