the path to enlightenment
A R I S H O K
is paved with ignorance
An unnatural still had fallen when he awoke with the dawn, the silence thundering in his blood-tipped ears.
Assured thusly that the deadly sands were dormant for the moment, Arishok unfolds himself from his cramped position, a faintly audible groan emitted as limbs that had long stiffened from lack of use are suddenly forced into action. With a vigorous, dog-like shake he dispels his ashen coat of the dust that clings to it, raising a cloud that irritates his already parched and aching throat. Then, ignoring the residual cramping in his legs, Arishok sets off across the arid landscape.
Though he heads back in the direction from which he had traveled upon his arrival, the scenery is almost entirely different; the sandstorm has shifted the dunes so drastically that it almost appears a different land. This, however, Arishok knows to be an illusion; though the sands may rise and fall at the wind's whim, the desert was as eternal and unchanging beneath this facade as the very purpose he served. Tal-sunnah. An unlikely smile curves his ivory lips, breaking the otherwise stoic rigidity of his expression.
He plods on.
Each step seems to lead him closer to his homeland, though in truth he could hardly be further from the place of his birth. It is a mere feeling, born of the inexplicable familiarity of the sands which surround him. One could easily say that all deserts are the same (hot and full of sand with little else to define them), but there was something about this land in particular, as if the occasional gust of heated air whispered promises in his ear. Promises of a return to the glory of old, and end to the chaos and madness of the world outside. For too long Arishok had drifted, uncertain; now he had returned to the path, with the promise that others would soon be walking alongside him. His trials had simply been a test, his doubt a tool that had served, in the end, to strengthen his resolve.
The sun is at its zenith by the time the crisp scent of water assails his nostrils, glaring down relentlessly and even seeking to play tricks on his vision. Wise to its deception, however, Arishok had trudged doggedly onward, trusting the sense of smell over these convincing mirages until he had reached the true oasis. With painstaking care he picks his way down the dune, the burn of his throat intensifying now that its end was so near; had he been a creature of reckless or impulse, Arishok may have raced to assuage his thirst, but too long had he been schooled in patience and care.
As with the path he has chosen in life, he knows that everything will fall into place in its own time.
a bloodstained gray stallion
standing proud at 16.2 hands and
following the ways of his warlander ancestors
for nine years and counting
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