to feel that we exist, even though in pain
♠︎ ♕ ♠︎
The more horses that gathered, the quicker the mood of the clearing began to shift.
At first it had been a thing of wonder, of cautious contemplation - but as the small crowd began to grow, forming a thick ring around the Relic, the tension grew, too. Soon it felt to August thick as a thunderstorm, like the moments before a brawl. The thickening air - it’s hard to think it’s anything but magic, the way it knots inside him. When the golden stallion begins to see familiar faces - Minya, Boudika, a host of others from his court - he isn’t sure whether his unease increases or only changes shape.
It’s Boudika he drifts toward, the Relic still shimmering gold at the edge of his vision, when the clearing comes alive.
Again it’s the trees, no gruesome face in a trunk this time but the roots and branches animated like a single-minded entity. Halfway to the striped mare August turns back to the center of the clearing, to watch the wood take the shape of spines, of ribs - to watch the sand coat those not-bones - to watch the leaves make themselves into scales. He is sure time is running, seconds falling away like those shed leaves, but not in a way that makes sense; one breath the clearing was quiet but for the horses, and next there is a monster. (Not a monster - a guardian. But are all of them unworthy, or only some?)
He is not the first to strike. He only watches, flinching, a little, when the not-snake turns her whirling maelstrom of eyes his way. It is seething, moving, ready, but not yet attacking - the safest path seems to wait, for now.
Until others surge forward, attacking with hooves and teeth and magic. At once it falls into a frenzy, a cacophony of sound and motion, like nothing he’s experienced since that day, that day in the mountains when he was a boy -
August shakes his head, like he could clear those thoughts as easily as sand becomes a snake. Then he searches out Boudika, and anyone nearby, as a few horses engage the great beast’s head (though he wonders - might it not just grow another?). “Let’s rush the middle,” he calls to her, though he may as well be mouthing the words for all the noise in the clearing, “while it’s distracted -”
And as if it’s that simple, he throws himself in the melee to do exactly that.
@Boudika for the mention (and anyone else is welcome to hear him/interact)
-August chooses Option 2
