Falls

Someone had told him once that it was cathartic to process pain, that the only way to ever truly heal was to face it head on and move through and on. As his emerald eyes stared across the gray seas, white capped although not to impassable levels by the wind and abysmally constant sleet, he was pretty sure everything thing he had once been told was shit. All he felt while staring at the spot where he knew that forested island lay behind the low-lying clouds was shame and regret in revolving turns with unadulterated sadness. His spotted countenance was stony, his personal storm raging internally as it so often did as he ruminated on a past too distant to make any atonement for now. He knew that and yet he still stood on these familiar shores knowing exactly how long it would take to cross those waters and have his hooves rest on the mossy-padded floor of his forest.

No. He had to rebuke himself with a bit more force than he had expected as the words came unbidden into his mind. Not his, he had lost the right to call it such along with so many other things. With that reminder grinding on his heart he convinced himself to put the ghosts of the past at his back at least for a little while. The man was not so noble as to die on his sword, but it was more likely death would take him before he forgave himself for his shortcomings. Perhaps it was due to them that he had returned to the Islands once more, perhaps it was a longing for something familiar, or even the faintest hope of re-capturing even the faintest glimmer of what he once held so dear. Though the latter was not something he was even willing to admit to himself at this point; he was no stranger to heartache, but he wasn’t masochistic enough as to revel in it.

His large hooves fell heavily across the barren ground that was quickly becoming icy as the icy rain continued to fall, he wished it would just pick already and either rain or turn to snow as the in between was somehow more miserable than both combined. Soon he would have to make a decision on where he would spend the night, without the warmth of others in his back it would be dismal enough to not be frozen on top of it. The particles were already alighting on his mane and the thick fuzz of his winter coat and might even have shone had the light not been so gray, but he could thank his ancestors for his own thick skin and coat at least. Small blessing, his ma had always taught him to count those as they were so easily looked over but this was the only one he could find at the moment. Well, perhaps that and the fact that he had not frozen over when he had emerged out of the salty waters on the far side of the lands earlier that day. Though perhaps dying of a frozen heart might just be a fitting end he though with a huff that was a sad excuse for a laugh. That breath hung around him in a cloud for a moment, almost in mockery before finally dissipating.

No doubt he had looked rather unapproachable stomping through the normally peaceful Falls, head lowered in the stance of one used to traveling long distances but he didn’t take much notice of his surroundings until he reached the small copse of trees that were near enough to the falls that he could hear its rumbling cascade. That meant it wasn’t dangerously cold, at least not yet, but he would bet it wasn’t far off either. He gave a hearty shake of his thick head, dark tresses splaying wildly as his vibrantly hued eyes finally lifted to the bare branches of the slender trees which stretched overhead. Even without their foliage they were lovely, though the bulky man had a fondest for trees that he would never deny, but even to the most judgmental eye their beauty could not be denied. The ice had begun to cling to them as well, but with the sky as backdrop they did glisten and sparkle like tiny stars in the dim light and the spotted vagabond found his chest tightening once more.