Whether it was unconscious stubbornness or merely a general disinterest in the little dark mare, but his eyes remained trained upon the falls shimmering waters. Alone he might have been able to loose himself in the sight. To forget all about him and wrap himself in the sights and sounds that filled the air there. There was a balance of peacefulness and violence in the crashing waters. A beauty if he had allowed himself to see it. Yet that was not what he believed he needed, and so did not allow himself to see.
Any weight can be lifted with close friends to help bear the burden. Eyes still locked a faint snort slipped almost unheard into the air at those words. Had he been harder, allowed those fleeting emotions that drifted through the back of his mind to form in a different way the stallion that stood so statuesque before her might have scoffed at her words. And yet whilst no agreement was uttered, nor even felt, his only reaction was to inwardly draw away. The possible whisper of truth in the lady's words might have brought a small ripple of comfort and hope to some. But within only a few days of life the colt he had once been had accepted his mother’s words as fact. Around one mares hate filled words his world had been shaped.
How pleased now she would have been to see the result of her actions.
A touch. So fleeting and gentle yet it brought the greatest of reactions seen from the beast for some time. Small ears swivelled back flattening against his skull as nostrils flares. His black body abruptly came to life, surging away from that touch. And yet no danger to the mare radiated in his motions, nor the warning that flashed so quickly through his dark eyes. Gone as quickly as it arrived.
The ease of a gentle touch was unknown to the stallion. Scars scattered his dark hide, many as old as he. From that first day he had opened his eyes to the world he had known pain. There had been no mother’s joyous caress at the sight of her new born. He was punished. Punished for living, for breathing each day unless he hid in the shadows. Words and hooves and teeth had cut equally deep. All had had their hand in shaping him to the soul he was today.
Sides rose and fell in a series of deep breaths as he fell still, hooves scrapping against the stone beneath in unknown betrayal of his agitation. He had not moved far, just out of reach, but the flesh where her nose had brush quivered in memory of the contact. "Tis good you have such friends then." There was a roughness to his tones, unintentional but there none the less as he breathed, turning his features away.
