Baron had grown up. You couldn’t hit the road as a child, you just couldn’t. It wasn’t something he’d really wanted to do, no. If he could have been swept away to Neverland, it was pretty clear that this young man would have gone. He would have done it in a heartbeat. Life didn’t work that way. Life didn’t work that way when your sire keeled over and your dam, sick with loss or resentment or he didn’t even know what, ran off. The dunskin creature hadn’t been hit with feelings like that. At this rate, he didn’t want to be. They seemed ugly.
What he was used to, however, was the feeling of being alone. When you were alone, running all by yourself, no one to watch your back, you seemed to see all sorts of things. He’d seen all sorts of things in the two years since he’d last seen the Islands. He’d seen all sorts of things that you’d see in nightmares. He’d seen all sorts of things that were flat, two dimensional, and convinced he was stupid. Stupid boy, don’t even talk. That’s what they all said.
It didn’t matter. None of them mattered. At the end of the day all the man that was hardly a man at all wanted was to go back home. He wanted his big brother back.
When you’re alone, your mind tends to play tricks. Your mind shows you what you want to see. In this case, his mind was picking up a scent he wanted to smell. It was a trail, not a very fresh one judging by the way it had deteriorated. Still, it left the young man with a shred of hope.
The Islands. Home. They hadn’t changed. Sure, those that lived here had come and gone. New scents had pushed old ones out, time had gone on. It was how the chips fell. The Islands hadn’t changed. The names echoed in his head as he paddled past, through choppy winter surf. Snowy Tinuvel. Green Luthien. Dry Cimarron. Atlantis. The name struck the young man in the chest, a wet air blowing off the land mass. Had it ever really been the home he dreamed of?
But it was Encantador’s scent that pulled him elsewhere. The Salem. It echoed in his mind. The movements of the young man became feverish as he neared the most arid of the Islands. What seemed to be a bubble of heat had drifted into these lands-what was freezing elsewhere had warmed up to what could have been a temperature of mid spring. Pulling himself from the icy surf, the colt stumbled. It was as if he was a gawky, awkward foal once more. He didn’t mind, as for now, it was the last thing on his mind.
The young man couldn’t hold it to himself any longer. The name that had been in his mind, the one he’d been asking for in the past couple years, he was here. ”En-n-ncantad-dor!” Yet the stutter hadn’t left his voice. The bellow came from his chest, round and full, yet still holding onto a shred of childhood. It was the voice of a teenager who had become a child once more.
swimming through sick lullabies
BARON
|El Barroco X Legacy|
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