Common

Hawke

xxy / six / grullo tobiano / mixed breed / 15.3hh

There were many who might have been uncomfortable in the moments of silence that stretched between their words, but Hawke was not. Like hir companion, the grullo used these moments to allow hir mind to wander down the paths of life shi'd already traveled, striving to untangle the snarled threads of hir past. Every sensation felt in the present was an invitation to immerse hirself in the past - even something as ordinary as the burn of brisk air in hir lungs.

For the earliest years of hir life, the mouse-colored creature had not known winter. Shi was born on Atlantis, and after the ghosts of hir family had forced hir to move on, Hawke had migrated to Salem. Now there had been a landscape to match the desolation the tobiano equine felt inside - a place where there was little room for sentiment, and less for weakness. One either found the strength to stand on their own...or they perished. It was in the desert that Hawke had lost hir eye, but what shi'd gained had more than outweighed the sacrifice.

Salem had shaped Hawke more than hir genes, more than hir sire.

Without a doubt, the androgynous creature would not have survived without the harsh lessons that shi learned in the arid climate. But they had also served to further skew hir view of the world, leaving the grullo wary and withdrawn. Shi was slow to trust, and even when the effort was made, rarely was an outsider allowed to glimpse even a flicker of emotion or to share even a moment of vulnerability. These were faults that Hawke had come to recognize over time, and struggled to set aside. It wasn't easy.

"I am known as Hawke," the drab-colored creature responded to the question that pierced her thought-filled torpor. Shi wondered at the strange syllables hir companion sometimes spoke, but hesitated to ask their meaning and origin. It was difficult to determine whether such a question would be prying into personal matters. Though this Lagertha may not mind answering, such requests typically invited like in kind, and Hawke preferred to revisit hir past in solitude.

The was shi saw it, there was no sense in sharing something that no amount of discussion could change.

"When I made my home on these isles," the grullo shared haltingly, "It was Salem that called to me most. A bleak place, but not without beauty. There saw something about the constant struggle to survive that made one more grateful for the life they'd been gifted." It was only when shi'd nearly perished wandering those sandy dunes that Hawke had realized shi would sooner live. Until that moment, grief and pain had seduced hir into thinking that death was a merciful end. It was only on its brink that Hawke had seen that death was just as merciless as life - and once it was done, there was no telling where shi would end up.

"And you, Lagertha?" the painted grullo prompts, hir tongue stumbling only slightly over the foreign syllables of her companion's name. One yellow eye probes the depths of the silver bay's gaze, the other remining fixed in its permanent hooded glare. "What place calls to your heart?" It was a deep question, perhaps, but Hawke was not made for light conversation. The solitary creature sought answers from speech, not the simple pleasure of another's company. Time had taught hir that any connections shi made were as ephemeral as the morning mists, but shi would remember the mare's words long after her face had faded into obscurity.

*hir and shi are gender-neutral pronouns