Falls

The early morning light was still new, barely painting the horizon in pastels as he stared across the mist of the falls. The thaw had come early and he had found peace within the constant thrum of sound which permeated the area in its wake. He glanced for a moment to the slumbering form of his daughter a short distance away. She was still angry with him, and he could not blame her. He had attempted to do his best by her, but ultimately had come out doing as much as he could stand. The death of her mother in childbirth had nearly been the end of him. Not that they had shared any particular bond, but that he had by some means caused her demise had broken and haunted him atop every other mistake in his life until he could not see a way out. He had survived only for Cricket’s sake, not willing to allow her death to be laid at his hooves as well, but he had known she was not pleased with the half-life he had chosen to keep on living. Some sins simply did not deserve forgiveness.

However, with her here now and with the changes being back on the Islands had already begun to work in his soul he felt the pull of life more than he had in an age. The shelter he had taken with Riviani against the blizzard and the spar he had later had with Kendry both had served to reignite his will to do more than just survive every day at its barest. Cricket locating him was the final nail in the coffin of the life he had been living, he knew that with her there was no going back now. Not that she was babysitting him, she had her own freedoms and was taking them liberally, but she returned every night. She had forced him to clean up, grooming him so that the last vestiges of the heavy winter coat which has sustained him were gone along with the dried mud which had caked his undersides. Now he nearly shone In the dim light, burnished copper against vivid white mottled haphazardly across his thick body.

The sound of running attracted his attention, both for its noise and the oddity of it at such an hour. Hooves clattering across rock on the path that led to the top of the falls was instantly recognizable as the man had used that trail himself many a time since he had made the copse of trees here his makeshift home. He allowed curiosity to fill him, instead of the typical disgruntlement he may have felt not too long ago. With one last glance toward the golden form of his daughter he wandered towards the well-worn route that led up towards the rocky outcropping where the water of the falls originated. It wasn’t a hard journey, and he scaled it only a matter of moments with his large strides.

Breeching the plane of the mesa that rose above the trees and meadows below it took him the shortest instant to identify the source of what had pulled him here. He studies her quietly for a moment, her sides still heaving with the exertion of whatever it was she had been doing but he did not feel any distress coming from her which meant it had been done willingly he assumed. Despite the intensity of her breathing she seemed oddly at peace and it compelled him to approach. In the dim light she was captivating, the deep russet of her coat like the last light the fire casts before turning to smoke. It was not at all unlike his own underneath the patchy white coat that careened across his body. He came to stand beside her, making no attempts to hide his approach as his broad head looked out across the expanse of the world beneath their hooves. “The promise of a new day is a powerful thing.” His baritone voice is as quiet as possible, as if not wanting to break the magic that seems to bind this moment, but finding he could not continue on in silence.