[P] Call Me When You Get It

[Sarkan]

Sarkan The moral of the tale is this: whoever allows himself to be whipped, deserves to be whipped.   Truth be told, Sarkan was no fan of civilization. Oh, he liked people well enough, on their own. But the big stallion did not care at all for crowds, or buildings forced and leaning together like teeth in a too-small mouth. Maybe it was his size, or that the vast majority of his time was spent alone or passing company with a few other travelers, or that he’d never seen a city at all until he was almost four years old. Whatever the reason (despite his vast amount of time alone, the grey was not given to introspection) it wasn’t the cold that kept his shoulders tight with tension and his steps a little stiff as he traveled the well-worn streets near the castle. It was late winter, when the beauty of fresh snow had long since been degraded to brown slush, but the morning sun washed the buildings and trees in warm gold as though it were spring already. When Sarkan saw the message board well-decorated with with paper, he ambled over as incuriously as any other citizen. His bright blue eyes scanned the letters, finding nothing new - the same dire warnings about the poacher(s) that stalked the forest, a reminder not to travel within Viride alone, a call for patrols with the meeting time and place written neatly at the bottom. This last was why he came to the city today - to join in the hunt for the villain - but he had several hours yet before it left. By the time he’d finished glancing over the other messages, a few others horses had congregated around him. Sarkan smiled, nodded, and stepped nimbly away. The crowd in the street was only growing with the day; when he glimpsed the quiet courtyard through a stone archway he took the opportunity to leave the hubbub behind for a bit. He was no patron of the arts, but the gray stallion could admire the serenity of the place, with its quietly burbling fountains and the buds that were just beginning to form on bare branches. More interesting was the woman ahead of him along the path; as she admired the sculpture that faced (by no accident, he was sure) east into the sun, he admired the gold wound round her legs, her elegantly braided main and tail, and the fine antlers arching back over her shoulders. He wondered whether they were bone or keratin. Before the time he spent watching her dragged into something improper, Sarkan stepped forward, clearing his throat when her gaze dropped to the ground. For his part, the Percheron kept his on the statue, save for a little summer-blue glance her way. “What a fierce-looking woman she is. What’s her story?” @Llewelyn