Falls

Quietly, the stallion grazed. His blue eyes half closed in contentment, while his thick black tail swished at his white speckled flanks idly. The cast of the sun’s colors illuminated his back, while the heavy clouds and their threatening snow seemed like a reprieve. The heat that this island held was nothing like his homeland, which he suffered in gratitude. Anything that was not like his birth home Espen was grateful for, but the chill in the air was also comforting. His body at last no longer covered in sweat along his flank and neck.


When the first heavy flake fell, the stallion raised his head, tipping it back so that he could watch the rest follow. They quickly began to line the thick tresses of his mane and along his back, but he did nothing to shake them away. Many would probably smile in that moment, a response to the feeling that burned inside him, Espen did not. His face remained slack of emotion. Only when he dropped his head again, letting his blue eyes cast about his surroundings, that his face finally gave the first hint of his emotions. His nostrils pinched, and his lips tightened in disgust while his eyes slitted in anger.


How dare she?!


Ears disappearing into the thick strands of his mane, the stallion lashed out with a heavily feathered front hoof. The freshly fallen snow puffing up like dust around the strike to the earth. After all the effort he had made to get here, to be free and she had somehow followed? Without thinking, his body reacting to the sudden onslaught of adrenaline, fear and anger; Espen charged. Muscles coiled and released beneath his brown and white body, driving him across the expanse that laid between them.


Only as he reached the small mare, Espen realized he had been wrong. Weight shifting to his hind legs, he sat back to slide to a stop. He managed to come to a grinding halt only a few inches from her, the snow swirling around them as he held his head high with white rims showing in his eyes. She was too little, and her face not colored quite the same as Clyre’s. Espen had made a mistake and now that he was no longer angry, he was frozen with his fear, unsure how to reverse what he had nearly done.