Meadow

He had not missed her scent that year past, striding off towards the island of temperate plants and if he had been any less of a boy, he would have followed her. He had been a child, then, though and sought only to prove prowess in wooing and passing his days in the delights of anyone who might have him.

Still, she remained the shadow that he could not forget. Always, even in the embrace of others, Pilar stood out as the craving he’d never thought possible. Surely, his father had his favorite woman - though it had not been his own mother. It was something his father claimed was irrefutable. No matter that the mare of his father’s choice had a mean disposition and a terrifying temper… it was her that called out to him in his sleep if she were not by his side.

It is that way for him now, just as his manhood blossomed into something beyond the virulent testosterone that had raged in him for those four years of his new-found life. She had found him still in that boyhood rut that made stags lock antlers and bugle till they strangled on their own obsession with their prowess. He had not done her justice, nor fulfilled his duty by her, and he wondered if it had even borne fruit - so short a time together as they had had.

His curled ears pin at the thought now as the leaves began to change once more and he once more sought the shores on which he had first made his discovery of her. Pilar. Oh to dance their dance again. To watch her lose her steps beneath the heat of his gaze, surprised by him as well as shy of herself. She was not the coy demure nature of some woman well-versed in her own allure. It was a young innocence that had made her so tender and sweet to the palette.

Almost before he can help himself, a call rings out over the strait between The Crossing and Luthien. It is a call, a cry of yearning. He finds himself wound up and bound to that delicious memory of a fleeting night and the embarrassment of having called out to a near apparition of a woman still pricks at his ego.

He is not reformed, you see. He is not freed of his proud demeanor, his self-assured manner always a part of him. He is the dance of Tandava. He is all the vigor, speed, boisterous elation, and ferocity of men made flesh. He cannot, therefore, be parted from the bad habits that assail all potentially good men without the counterpoint meant to dampen their effects on the world. He feels both all man and half a man, standing, calling out, hearing only the whisper of the sleeping world around him in reply.