Spartan
YOU EITHER CARRY YOUR SHIELD, OR COME HOME ON IT.
Years. It had been literal yeeeears since stepping foot on this damned island. This damned island plagued his thoughts and his dreams, both waking and sleeping. There was nothing he could eat, drink, do that did not evoke a memory of some kind of this place. Not all of them were bad, but not all of them could be considered good either. This island had been his home for years and he had won some big victories here and lost some even greater.
Nothing looked changed. The island held its same scars and secrets that it had all those years ago. Swimming back, he’d passed the remnants of Cimarron. The sea had swallowed that island while he’d live on it. That was a dream that stayed with the chocolate stallion like a scar; it was painful and would never heal right. But it was a cool scar... right? Who else here could say they survived the collapse of an island? If there was anyone, he wanted to meet them. Cimarron had been rocky, but green, cold yet warm, vast and finite all at the same time. It had been near perfect. At least to him. And then that terrible day happened and the sea had reclaimed what had never really belonged to him at all.
He had moved on from Cimarron, moved with what was left of his small family to Tinuvel and set up shop in the Cove. It had been cold. Very cold. The Cove had changed him, hardened him. It had been beautiful in its own right and Spartan had grown to appreciate the beauty Tinuvel offered and even fell in love with the Cove itself. Some of his small family had made it off Cimarron after all and found him in Tinuvel’s Cove, lifting the spirits of the flaxen haired stallion. What had once been so isolated and lonely was then warm and inviting and he had fallen in love with the land. So much so that he’d fought for it and won, fashioning himself King of Tinuvel.
He should’ve known there was a fat chance of that ever happening.
The memories followed, faint at first but then growing ever persistent. He spent years shoving them down deep, burying them with the hope they’d never see the light of day again. But over the years, they kept coming back up until eventually, almost everything would remind him in some way of this damned place. And for someone who puts so much stock in fate... he couldn’t not come back.
So here he stood; the former King of Tinuvel and the Cove, dripping wet on the shores of the big island with a flaxen forelock plastered to his stern face.
And only one thing on his mind.
Now what?
mustang mix . stallion . flaxen liver chestnut . 14.3 . IF .