Hajduk didn’t mind much whether they stayed or went; the heat did him no damage or good but sometimes he could smell death even when there was none. His sense of smell was stronger than Toro’s and he often felt like the only one who knew where the corpses had been. But then, the people hadn’t forgotten. They mourned. Toro mourned. And Hajduk didn’t know what to do about it. He was so young.
El Toro ran from it and toward it, back and forth, zig zagging and shying and charging. He wanted leadership and exile all at once. Let me protect them, he thought. Get them away from me, he thought right after, or right before - it didn’t quite matter. He was always thinking these things, trapped in a vortex of his own making. He wondered if he would ever escape. His father didn’t.
He remembered meeting Raymond here, watching the bison with what he couldn’t admit was fear. They were nowhere to be seen, not from where he was, but it was like they were there all over again and his lungs crinkled like paper on the red hot dust -
A dreamer with the fever to be great was all I ever wanted
Charlie has never known anything other than freedom.
She has always roamed, far and wide, wherever she pleases for whatever length of time she deems fit. The filly is a wild girl, an adventurer, a wanderer, as much in her heart like the heroes of her favorite childhood tales as she can possibly be at such a young age. She has been a regular visitor to Denocte since she was nothing but legs and wide eyes.
Now, the young pegasus flaps her growing wings and flies low over the prairie outside the night court’s walls. Indy can fly much higher than her still, much more gracefully, but with every flight and every day that passes the girl’s skill improves just a little bit more.
As she begins to tire, Charlie tips to the side. Balance lost, she drops rather inelegantly to the ground, stumbling a few steps forward. The poor landing doesn’t seem to dampen her bright spirit, however, which matches the flame of her vermillion eyes. “Indy!” she calls to her bonded, as the osprey swoops down from the sky above.
That is when Charlie notices the unicorn and the lion, twin statues of brightest ivory in the middle of the fields. Just standing there, looking. She pauses behind them, feeling the familiar weight of Indy alighting upon her shoulders. “What are you looking for?” she asks, because as far as the girl can tell there’s nobody else out here but them.
Something stumbles to the ground behind him, and Toro turns in time to see the wobbling filly and her bird.
A pegasus filly.
He would have moved to help her, but - she seemed fine. No need to get involved with that sort of thing (and in the throes of self pity, no less). Hajduk didn’t understand much of the difference between one horse or another, or didn’t care to; he’d never met another lion and so whether one horse had wings or not was inconsequential. He had no idea how different he was from a normal lion, after all.
El Toro turns away again, but - in typical fashion - she is full of questions about him that he does not want to answer.
A cub, Hajduk thinks. Toro snorts. The white stallion towers over her, and yet she has no fear. Fear is something learned, sometimes taught.
But she is only a child. There is no need to be so cruel.
And yet-
”I thought Caligo might stop by for a visit.” Sarcasm wasn’t his usual weapon of choice; his disobedient mouth seemed to prefer either vile hatred or sputtering idiocy immediately before running off. Hajduk huffed, watching the girl’s osprey. Toro rolled his eyes. ”What are you looking for?”
A dreamer with the fever to be great was all I ever wanted
Charlie wanders up next to the man, staring out over the prairie like him, vermillion eyes bright and sharp and wondering. “Caligo?” she quips, head tilting slightly to one side. The young girl had heard the stories of when the gods had come down from the mountain and walked among their people, but she hadn’t been born then. It seemed impossible to her.
“You don’t smell like Denocte,” the filly observes, glancing at the stallion. There isn’t the familiar scent of spice and smoke clinging to him like it seems to everyone else in the court. He could be new, or he could not be from here at all. “Why are you waiting for Caligo?”
Indy shifts her weight upon Charlie’s shoulders, keeping a watchful eye over the stranger and his bonded. The girl can feel the osprey’s wariness across their bond; the osprey is too protective of her. “I don’t know. I’m looking for something new, and you’re new,” she responds, “New to me and Indy, at least. I’m Charlie.”
The pegasus girl smiles. Her dark, short hair is a tousled mess upon her head, but her spirit is bright and burning. “I like your lion. You two look a lot alike,” in fact, Charlie doesn’t think she’s ever seen a horse and their bonded look so much alike. She tries to imagine what Indy would look like with her dark coloration and laughs to herself.
Oh, boy. He got a bright one. “I’m not,” was all he said, glancing at her from the corner of his eye. He didn’t really want to deal with this right now. Or ever. Children were - well. They needed to be protected, and that was important, but how often were they kept safe from harm? Not enough. He preferred the role of guardian, if needed, but distant from his charge (unless that charge happened to be a beautiful woman, of course). It certainly wasn’t his responsibility to be nice to her, and she wasn’t in danger, so…
”Not as new as I’d like to be.” He sighed. The ivory stallion looked at her as she introduced herself. Hajduk sat beside him, grooming a paw. ”I’m Toro. This is Hajduk.”
Hajduk preened at the compliment. Toro smirked. ”He’s not so bad. Keeps me on my toes.” In truth, Hajduk had done more to keep him from the ledge in his short life than anyone else had in all of Toro’s. ”He was born from my rib, you know. He’s like my…brother. Or my son,” his lip curled up mischieviously as Hajduk shot him a glare. He’d raised Hajduk from a cub, and now he was a lanky young upstart, like Toro once was. (Or still is, on occasion.) Rib! Hajduk snarked. What rib?
”How’d you come across that bird of yours? Indy, was it?”
A dreamer with the fever to be great was all I ever wanted
Not much of a talker, this one, Charlie decides as she watches him. He glances down at her sidelong as he says very little in response to her comment. She doesn’t fail to notice that he doesn’t answer her question about why he’s waiting for Caligo, either. Hmph.
Although, she has to admit that she prefers it a lot more to someone like Corrdelia, who seems to talk her ear off. The filly knows she can do her fair share of talking—she’s got a lot of ideas and adventures to talk about, of course—but even the lady living in the swamp talks way too much for her.
When he says he’s not as new as he’d like to be, Charlie wonders what he means. Is he calling himself old? She grins a little, eyes brightening like an ember. Does she make him feel old? She must make a lot of equines feel old, considering she’s so young. It must be hard being old, if that’s all you think about all the time.
“Your rib?” the young pegasus says with some incredulity. That just doesn’t make sense. How can anything be born from a bone? She glances at the lion, just barely catching the expressions on their faces. When he asks how she found Indy, Charlie tries very hard to school her expression, looking forward in an attempt to hide it. “Oh…”
“Indy? I hatched her from an egg.” Indy, still perched upon the girl’s shoulder, fluffs her feathers with indignity. Charlie raises a brow and glances at the man questioningly. She’s a lot more clever than she might seem, for a kid. The osprey tugs on a bit of Charlie’s mane with one of her feet, “What do you think you’re saying?” Charlie can’t help but begin to laugh.
“Your rib?” She looks away, but Toro sees the odd expression she’s making. “Indy? I hatched her from an egg.” The stallion nods, perplexed, until the girl bursts out laughing. A smirk pulls at Toro’s mouth. ”I suppose more birds are born from eggs than lions from bones.” He doesn’t quite believe her, or rather, doesn’t understand what is there to believe or not believe.
”Do you have parents or something that oughta be watching you?” She smelled like Terrastella, which wasn’t quite so close. Toro wasn’t very much interested in her, but she shouldn’t have been alone anyway - how old could she possibly be?
A dreamer with the fever to be great was all I ever wanted
He’s not exactly wrong about that. Charlie has never heard of anything being born from a rib (let alone any sort of bone), but plenty of things are born from eggs. Maybe she should have made her story more outrageous, like his.
When he asks about her parents she pauses a little. “My dad is in Delumine, and my mom pretty much lets me do what I want.” In the beginning, her mom used to send her bonded after her to babysit. Maybe the girl got too old for that. Or too good at getting away.
“Denocte has a lot of ships, so I like to come here,” Charlie tells him. Anil, one of the tradesmen she’s come to know, is supposed to dock today. He always let’s the filly on board his ship, and he’s taught her a lot about how to sail one, too.
”My dad is in Delumine, and my mom pretty much lets me do what I want. Denocte has a lot of ships, so I like to come here.”
Toro frowned at this. That wasn’t right. His father had always been up his ass, telling him where and when to train so he could beat out those gods-damned Pegasi. And his mother - she would never think of letting her young son go wandering off, courts away, with only a bird to watch him. What it sounded like to him was that she didn’t have any parents at all, or if she did, they weren’t good ones.
”Oh,” is all he says at first, trying to think of what to say. Was she really lost? She didn’t seem lost. Maybe she needed a guardian. Going around talking to strangers wasn’t exactly safe…a Toro her age might’ve chased her into a river, intent on getting her wings soaked through so she couldn’t fly away. Toro could feel Hajduk’s amusement at his next words. ”Do you…want me to walk you to the shipyard?” Given how she almost crash-landed, he wasn’t sure if her wings needed a much longer break, and though he didn’t know her, he couldn’t live with the guilt if something happened on her way there.
A dreamer with the fever to be great was all I ever wanted
The man doesn’t exactly respond the way she would respond if someone told her the same thing. All he says is “oh” like, her being able to do whatever she wants whenever she wants isn’t a great thing. He seems pretty uncertain, if the sudden frown on his face is any indication.
I mean, what’s the big deal? Charlie has never gotten into trouble, she’s always had Indy by her side, she’s never needed anyone else. Just her and her bonded, who is practically a sister to her. The young pegasus shifts her weight and looks up at the man as he asks if she wants him to walk her to the docks.
She doesn’t really need him to, she knows how to get there from here, but he seems pretty concerned about it for some reason she can’t really figure out. Charlie shrugs a little bit, “Sure, if you want to,” and turns back toward the court, and beyond that Denocte’s port. It can’t hurt to have a little company, she figures, on the walk.
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