through the dry leaves the wind is whispering Posted on March 22, 2020 at 10:43:06 PM by Alto
Alto immediately shifts his eyes to the mossy ground at his hooves when the moonlit mare attempts to hide her face. I should have known, he scolds himself. No one would want anyone to see their face after crying. Instead he stares at the damp moss and how it grows in clumps upon the rocks, trying to figure out what he's supposed to do now. Now that he's stopped moving, the night suddenly feels colder. Alto shivers slightly as a cold breeze passes through the clearing, though he tries to make the motion subtle. His family would have frowned upon visibly shivering, among various other things. Then again, they tended to frown upon lots of things he did, and they aren't here with him now. That had been the whole point of coming here, after all.
I am okay, she says a second time, this time more firmly, and lifts her head to look at him. Alto looks up from the moss to meet her gaze, and he blinks in surprise. Not because they are reddened from crying - he'd expected that - but because they are blue and green, and they do not match. Alto has seen blue eyes before, though not in many horses. The other eye, however, is green, and that is something Alto has never encountered before. Then again, this is a foreign land. What he is used to might not be the norm for everyone here.
"Hi, Calypso. I'm Alto." He introduces himself, but leaves off his parents' names. They're not relevant anymore, he tells himself. That doesn't stop the pang of doubt that comes to him, though. Is it really right, to dismiss them like that when they'd raised him? Alto does his best to push the doubt away, but it remains an insistent tug at the back of his mind. Her thanks, too, make Alto unsure of how to respond. He really hasn't done much, other than ask if she's okay. "It's no problem." he replies, then adds: "Is there anything I can do to help?" It feels so inadequate when he knows nothing about this situation, but he offers anyway. Replies: