The Lost Islands
CLICK FOR IMAGE CREDITS

Peak

The Prime Minister

Khar'pern

The Codebreaker

Ashteroth

The General

Marceline

The Companions
None None None

The Thinkers

Naydra
Titan

The Politicians

Ararat
Axelle
Hollis
Mae
Nashira
Serenity

The Warriors

Clarity
Kaeja
Lysimache
Starling

The Trinkets

Beloved
Cato
Cullen
Güneşlenmek
Isengrim
Jigsaw
Kazimir
Octavius
Starscream
Yıldırım

PRIME MINISTER'S DECREE

"None." - Leader

The Offspring

Diccon (Cicada x Khar'pern)

Rules

• The Vulcan Peak is where homeless mares come to live as a sisterhood. Stallions may not live here except as captives or companions for the Leaders.

• Warriors keep mainly to fighting, Thinkers keep mainly to raiding, and Politicians may do both, neither, or act as diplomats. Members may issue their own battles and raids, but should generally consult the General, Codebreaker or Prime Minister for permission.

• All major decisions are determined by vote, but the Prime Minister maintains order within the Peak and has the final say.

• Elections for leadership positions will be held every TLI summer, provided the qualifying criteria are met.

• You can find detailed information about how the Peak works on the Rules page.
peace to all who sleep;
Posted on June 26, 2014 at 02:22:07 AM by Ikari



Light rainfall pattered on the lush greenery above Ikari’s head, falling in a fine mist beyond the dubious shelter he had chosen halfway up the mountainside. The trees he stood beneath were young yet, and there were not many of them. He felt water dripping in various places along his broad, dark back and head. For awhile he listened only to the sounds of the rain tapping the ground and his granddaughter breathing steadily nearby. Even though there was room for both of them, Impazienza had chosen to stand just out of reach of him and under the open, gray sky. She had insisted that the cold and the rain did not bother her when she discovered him sheltered under the trees. Besides the initial brush of their muzzles (and an affectionate nibble of her mane on his part), Impazienza had retreated almost immediately despite his multiple invitations to come stand beside him and share his warmth out of the weather.

After hearing her news, however, Ikari thought he could understand why his granddaughter kept her distance and allowed the rain to wet her coat to a deep, shiny black that even his clouded eyes could see. The stiffness in her body was not from age, although she seemed to favor her right foreleg, and even though her body trembled from time to time the mahogany bay shire did not think it was due to the cold. He inhaled slowly and held his breath for three heartbeats, closing his eyes as he counted. When Ikari exhaled, it was just as slowly as he had inhaled, and he did not stop until all of the air in his lungs had been expelled.

He opened his eyes and peered at his granddaughter, grateful that she had not chosen to stand any further away. It would have been difficult for him to pick up on her distress otherwise. “I am sorry, Impazienza, for your loss. You told me once that you were waiting for his apology,” he said, and let the question hang unasked in the damp air between them. Right now the fact that his son was dead could wait: his granddaughter, still alive, needed consoling. Ikari could and would grieve later. He heard her draw a sharp breath, then her explosive exhale, and nearly smiled. She was more like her father than she knew.

“I never had a chance to stop,” she said, and turned her head away from him. One blue eye stared at Ikari but he knew it saw nothing. He closed his eyes against his own pain for a moment, grateful of that respite, and opened them as she spoke again. Impazienza still faced away from him, and her individual words were impossible for him to hear as she mumbled into the rain. He let his eyes wander over her broad back to the great patch of white that cloaked her hindquarters. None of the horses in the Valley have any markings like that, he thought, it must have come from her dam’s bloodlines.

Impazienza faced him again and Ikari’s eyes slid unerringly to hers. “I’m sorry. He was your son, and you just returned... Are you doing okay?” she asked. His granddaughter would not hold his gaze, however, and he watched her eyes fall to his thinly feathered hooves.

Ikari flicked rain off of his ears. “He was my son,” he said, both agreeing with her and answering her question. “Impazienza. Come here, granddaughter.” He watched her ears turn back, saw her raise a hoof as if to walk away, and continued before she could withdraw and isolate herself: “You are not alone, today. I am not alone, today. Let us not be alone together.” He shifted his weight to hear his own bones creak from the chilly weather and grunted as if in pain. The rain was uncomfortable for his joints at most, but his exaggeration had the desired effect. Impazienza moved to stand beside him under the dripping canopy and, there, out of the rain and exposed to his warmth, something seemed to cave within her. He heard it in how her breath suddenly hitched, and though his granddaughter tried to hide (or stifle) her sorrow it made her whole wet body tremble against his.

The old stallion leaned into her and turned his head, lifting his chin over her neck to pull her to him as he stared sightlessly through the drizzle. Impazienza pressed her damp cheek against his neck and wept, her erratic breath warming the bottom of his chest with each choked exhale. Even in the midst of grief, she fought against the emotion, trying to swallow each sob before the world could hear it.

He felt his heart beat more strongly as he whispered, “I am sorry. For whatever he did to you, for whatever pain he caused you, I am sorry. From what I know of my son it was not intentional, but regardless, he should have known better. I am sorry he waited too long, and I am sorry fate took him from you before you decided to forgive him.”

“Wasn’t fate,” she muttered, her voice pitched higher than usual from grief. “Rurisk.”

“What risk?” Ikari asked, indulgent.

Impazienza’s voice was hard, angry, but the words she spoke were soft-edged due to the trembling of her mouth and Ikari’s old ears. “Rurrisk. My brother. His son, your grandson— he killed Kisei.”

It took Ikari a moment to decipher what his granddaughter said, and a second more to understand the meaning behind the words. It was not fair of him but he asked the question anyway: “Are you sure?”

Impzienza’s ears thwacked against his neck and base of his jaw as she pinned them. “Yes. Jezi —Jezibelle, sister— saw them. Him. Rurisk,” her voice ended on a hiss and she seemed to gain some control over her grief. Anger was a powerful emotion, as Ikari well knew— his dam had not named him “wrath” for nothing. “He was defenseless, lying under a tree, I think, and Rurisk just killed him.”

Ikari waited. His own emotions of grief and disbelief and, if it were warranted, anger, were suspended, held carefully outside of himself until he was certain his granddaughter was finished speaking. This was worse news than her initial admission of Kisei’s death, but he dared not interrupt Impazienza, not now.

She sniffed and pressed her face against him for another two heartbeats before she heaved a loud, defeated sigh. “Can’t blame him, though. Jezi says Kisei beat him. For two years. No one stopped him.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know!”

“No— why did Kisei beat Rurisk?”

Impazienza sighed again, less forcefully this time. “He’s mute. Apparently he was sick of having defected children. He gave me away and he beat his son; who knows what happened to any others he had who weren’t perfect.”

Despite the chill from the rain, Ikari felt sweat gather at his withers and hips and where his granddaaughter pressed against him. Oh, Kisei, my wayward son— what have you done? “I do not think you should assume your blind eye had anything to do with his actions. You are perfect the way you are, and I do not think—”

“How could you know? You weren’t even here when any of this happened. Sun and stars,” she swore, “I didn’t even find out about anything until recently! I didn’t know Jezi was an actual horse until she came to the Peak on her own one day.”

He was glad that, despite the heat in Impazienza’s voice, his granddaughter remained tucked under his neck. He cherished the moment, letting her rhetorical question hang in the air for just a moment longer. When he responded to it, it was very likely that she would pull away. “I am afraid this may be my fault,” he said, and felt her wet coat drag dampness across his neck as she shifted in place. Ikari did not give Impazienza a chance to ask for clarification: he provided it quickly and before he lost his nerve, although it took him a moment to speak straight.

“Your uncle, my second son— Qandor. Ach. Qandor was born mute. I thought... Well. In retrospect I suppose it might have looked a bit differently to Kisei... Your father, as I’m sure you know, is a —was a— headstrong, bold, and competent stallion. Even as a colt he was brash. And Qandor— he was mute. I never treated him any differently than my other children but it was clear as he aged that he was a timid colt who lacked confidence. I must confess I had... other things to attend to at the time.” An enemy named Sanctus, and another named Purgatory— both related, both nuisances, both defeated. Ikari did not dwell on his victory now.

“I was not able to help Qandor until he was already mature. I gave him the position of second in command of the Forest, intending to help him build confidence and to support him as he grew into adulthood. Kisei, I thought, understood that. Your father was more than able to go out into the Islands, or even beyond them, and gather his own herd, find his own land... I never worried about his competence. Kisei, I thought, would succeed at anything he attempted.” Ikari’s cloudy eyes unfocused, his thoughts on Impazienza’s slowly steadying breathing and those long-ago sunny days in the Forest, surrounded by the laughter of his mares and the sweet breath of his children as they smiled up into his face. “Kisei and I talked about it, once, before he came back to the Islands, and I thought... I thought he understood. I kept Qandor in the Forest because he would fail otherwise. Kisei, I knew, could not fail.”

His granddaughter was quiet and very still. All around them the rain fell, and Ikari closed his eyes and let his neck press further against her crest as he took comfort from her physical presence. The mahogany bay’s voice was quieter as he continued, “At least, I thought he could not. But if what you say... if what your sister saw is true, then I fear I was wrong.”

Impazienza pulled away from the pressure of his neck, and Ikari moved his head to let her go. She remained at his side, however, and said in a small voice, “Families are complicated.”

He thought back to when he had led the Forest herd. His biggest concerns, for the most part, had simply been in getting the mares to socialize with one another and raising his children well. The mahogany bay stallion had never considered this future for his son, or for his grandchildren. If what Jezibelle had told Impazienza was true, then who was to blame? Rurisk, for killing Kisei? Kisei, for beating Rurisk? Or was it his fault, for trying to do well by one son and inadvertently slighting the other?

His granddaughter rested her head along his withers and sighed, cocking one hind hoof onto its tip. Her white, black-spotted hindquarters faced the rest of the Peak. Ikari turned his broad head to lip at the damp black fur of her barrel, knowing any further attempts to console his granddaughter right now would be useless. He faced forward again, ears facing the mountainside, and continued to watch the sparse rainfall.

The two draft horses breathed together, sharing silence as their thoughts revolved around the black stallion who had brought so much love, havoc, and loss into their lives.

ikari; stallion; twenty-one springs; shire; 18 hh; mahogany bay; nomad of the crossing
children
Kisei [x Shinkara]
Qandor [x Caustic]		grandchildren
Impazienza [Kisei x Cecilia]
Jezibelle [Kisei x Cecilia]
Rurisk [Kisei x Cecilia]
Dynalia [Kisei x Mazurka]		great-grandchildren
Aevin [Rurisk x Nymeria]
Kendry [Rurisk x Marlena]
Imp [Admiral x Jezibelle]


Replies:

Post a reply:
Name:
Email:
Subject:
Message:
Link Name:
Link URL:
Image URL:
Password To Edit Post:





Create Your Own Free Message Board or Free Forum!
Hosted By Boards2Go Copyright © 2020


<-- -->