 His mother had instilled a sense of wanderlust in him. In the days of his youth, he too had travelled far at Chimaera’s hip - through woodland and sagebrush steppe - over mountain and through valley. But, they had never made it to the Islands together. He had only come here after he had lost everything: his mother, his childhood home, his world. To him, a lost and broken man, The Lost Islands are aptly named.
Slowly, in the years that he has been here, he has found pieces, jagged and rough, to fit into his heart (a family in the Prairie, a purpose in keeping them from harm), but his heart will forever be imperfect.
He feels that imperfection now - an ache at the seams where he has tried to piece himself back together. He wanders, and for the first time he thinks he understands his mother’s ceaseless travels. This is not the first time he has traversed the islands, but it is the longest he has stayed away from Prairie since he had come to live there. There is a discomfort there that he cannot explain, but it keeps him away despite his responsibilities there.
He doesn’t know it, but he has gone in search of pieces to patch his blackhole heart again.
The roar of the Falls deafens the worry - the ache - in his chest, filling him with powerful sound, until that is all there is: the power of the Falls coursing from his ears down to his hooves. He closes his eyes. It is cleansing to be here, in this place he had often haunted when he had first come to the islands. Mist drifts and catches in his whiskers, lays like a veil across his hide, beads and drips and takes his uneasiness back into the earth as it falls.
Eventually, he opens his eyes again, his gaze following the water as it spills down into the river below. Then he sees her - nearly as pale as milk in the autumn evening. He calls gently, low and rumbling like the falls he stands beneath. He ventures downstream towards her, the slight limp in his foreleg bridling his descent, though he is eager to meet this creature that has come to share the beauty of the Falls with him.
“Beautiful, is it?” he says, though his eyes do not venture back to the rushing tumult. He comes to stand not too far from her, though he is mindful of her personal space in case she may not want his company. He offers her a crooked, boyish smile that is somehow handsome against his scarred face.
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b a l o r
relic x chimaera |
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