living beyond your years, acting out all their
fears
He came from a place that no longer wanted him, and there was no regret in him when he fled. No turning back. There was nothing behind worth grieving. In anger and rage, he shook off every weight, tore to pieces who he had been, so that, by the time he stumbled to a halt high upon the rugged clifftops towering over a restless sea, the lone stallion bellowed at the empty heavens, haunted by the ghost of what he had been. Staring toward the horizon, he set his sights upon smudged shadows that blurred the skyline. Islands, ones he had not known to exist. None of his kin had ever fled so far to the west.
The islands were an unknown. And so was he.
He descended the cliff-face down a treacherous path with a feverish energy, as though he had not been on the move for days, and spent the last several hours steadily eating up the miles over land to sea. He was no fool though, did not dither at the tideline, debating whether or not to risk the swim now. Even as he felt himself rising from the ashes of what he’d been, the sun was sinking in the sky.
Starscream was nothing if not patient (and cunning), and he would never be so desperate as to recklessly risk his life for the sake of one day. He was far too prideful a creature to entertain the possibility of committing himself to a watery grave. No, no, if he ever were to die it would be in brutal, bloody battle-rage.
He paced the shoreline, well out of reach of the hungry tide, restless and brooding. As it often did, come nightfall, sleep eluded him, even in spite of the physical exhaustion his perilous journey had left him with. The night sky was clear, and the stars brighter than they’d ever seemed. Momentarily, he entertained the idea that this was a sign, but then Starscream put such romantic thinking aside. The only destiny that awaited him was the one he’d fight for, with all the fierceness he’d lacked as a child.
The constellations had shifted in the heavens, and while he admired them with new eyes, he subconsciously reached for the tender edges of psyche, learning himself again in this new form he’d carved himself into, having shattered the foundation of his youth, piecing the broken bones of the boy he’d been back together with such care and craftsmanship that he marvelled at what he discovered within just as he marvelled at the map of the heavens.
Perhaps the stars did shine a little brighter after all.
He slept well into the day, tucked into the shadows at the base of the soaring cliffs. In time, when he was rested and ready for the last leg of the journey, Starscream cut a path through the waves, straight and true. It was late afternoon by the time he felt sand shifting beneath his hooves again. The lone stallion meandered inland, taking his time to look and learn. Found a stream where he slaked his thirst, and grazed as he went.
The area that he skirted seemed empty of his own kind, and given the myriad of scents going stale, he wasn’t all that surprised. Places that belonged to wanderers were never so unsafe as upon the cusp of Autumn. Perhaps he would stay, lay a trap and pretend he wasn’t a stranger to this land. But lo, he came upon a promising lead, and hungrily latched onto it, all too eager to follow in the footsteps of a mare who’d passed through this way not so long ago.
By the time he caught sight of her in the waning light, still some distance off, he was not all that surprised to find she’d already attracted the attention of another stallion. Starscream halted in his quiet approach, but not out of hesitation, never that. Consideration, and concealed calculation. There was something primal in him, as there was in every stallion to varying degrees. That he did not rush in to assert dominance, or split the air with a challenging cry, might be seen by some as insecurity or weakness.
More fools, them.
Starscream was a creature apart, something new seeking knowledge. Because knowledge, even a false, forced semblance of it, mist-thin and insubstantial as air, was power.
He circled, slow and silent, drinking in both the sight of the dark-coated mare and the silhouette of the pale stallion. If either noticed movement and glanced his way, the sleek, bronze-brown stallion would not falter in his stride. Approaching from downwind, he gleaned a sliver of insight from the scents carried to him on the wind and tucked it away, pausing in his stride momentarily as one dark-speckled ear turned casually to catch the tail-end of what seemed a warning.
Without a word, he briefly acknowledged the other stallion, before tilting his head and settling his honeygold gaze upon the silver haired beauty. Three sharp little words cut into his tongue, but he kept them reined there, instead of letting them slip, smooth and sly, between his lips. She’s not alone. Starscream would not assume her to be a damsel, and so long as there was little sign of distress, he would merely keep up his mirroring, a pretence of polite concern that thinly veiled something far deeper and darker.
Let his quiet, unobtrusive approach and relaxed demeanour be taken as it would, by the mare, by the stallion. From the way he’d positioned himself, he could see and hear them both clearly. Was it bold of him to assume he’d be ready for anything either of them could potentially throw at him? Starscream liked to think so. Boldness was something he found extremely attractive, after all. He was nothing, if not patient.
And he was determined to become acquainted with the resonance of the mare’s voice before he treated her to the timbre of his softly accented tones.
xoxo
STARSCREAM