They said we'd burn so bright.
We burn this city and go.
The young spotted stallion ambled down the semi-familiar path from the Prairie into the Forest. His dark eyes were wide and ears alert as he took small, but brisk steps deeper into the dense thicket. It was the first time he'd ever left the Prairie by himself and he wasn't sure how to feel about it. Just weeks ago, his brother Shamwari told him he was headed to the Bay to live with a family friend, Nephilim. But things had changed and quickly, when word had gotten around the islands that Nephilim and his family no longer ruled the Bay. Paradiso was worried about his brother. Shamwari seemed on edge lately. He seemed suspicious and anxious for what was to come. Because of this, Paradiso didn't feel so great himself.
He had been instructed to meet Menkhet, the aggressive mare Paradiso had met just once before, in the middle of the night, when he was much younger. Paradiso was going to live with her now, and use whatever skills he'd learned from Shamwari and Samhain to help her in the Forest. It all seemed a little surreal. One moment, the young stallion was having a great time traversing the Prairie with Bri and Ostara. The next he was being plucked from the only place he really knew and being asked to be responsible for something bigger than him. Paradiso didn't truly understand what was going on, but the last thing he wanted to do was upset his brother. So he swallowed hard, said goodbye to his friends in the Prairie and walked along the lonely trail from his homeland and into the neighboring terrain.
When the shrill call of another broke through the otherwise calm sounds of the forest at dawn, Paradiso stopped dead in his tracks. A heat radiated through his chest and splintered through his veins as his heart beat furiously against his rib cage. For a second, his heart beat was all he could hear in his ears. The young stallion swallowed hard again, in effort to rid the fear from his mind and body, and returned the call blindly, his own hoarse whinny cutting through the trees. Then he turned his frame in the direction of where heard it, and began to cut through the brush until he reached another well worn trail. His crystal blue eyes caught sight of a stocky roan colored stallion he'd never seen before and he froze dead in his tracks. The young stallion's nostrils flared and he dipped his head to this stranger before taking just one or two more apprehensive steps forward. "Hello." He managed to squeak out, his gaze falling to his hooves and the dead leaves on the ground. "My name is Paradiso, son of Valentine and brother of Shamwari of the Prairie. I'm looking for Menkhet. Do you know her?"
2 | Stallion | Evaline x Valentine | Smoky black pintaloosa | 15 hh | Photo © Carina Mailwald | © Vinyl |
|
|