Aldebaran
[al DEH bur rahn]
✮ no wife ✮
▻ no children ◅
The Dunes were as he left them, if one can even say that about shifting dunes. The old oases were still in the places that they’d left them. The cave his brother stuck to was still there, the private duo-oasis that his brother had once claimed was yet in it’s rightful place, the small southern one was a little smaller but a good rain would bring it to overflowing in second, and even Atair’s northernmost one had survived the change through the years. He had passed the Nomarch Oasis at one point and though it didn’t seem as verdant now, it was still the most of them all. For now, he returns from having found Al Hilal, Al Murzim, and the Teke-bred child of Sakhmet. He’d told them by the end to travel the nomanslands well until he could find the rest of the family.
They would all converge, he knew. Even then he’d been to his old oasis and now was planning to return to the border beach with the Hills to tell them he’d smelled their father. In time, of course, because he’d never been one to overstress how Atair and Rigel always did. He may have been swift, but try-hard was not much his cup of tea.
Tonight he knew they’d have bedded down if they were smart and so the need to immediately find them was lax. He’d also smelled Eness there with another stranger’s scent - so if they had parted from their mother, then they were well able to care for themselves. Not imminent danger meant no imminent stress.
Instead he basks in the cooler breeze of autumn night, nostrils sucking down the wind as if it was his and no one else’s. This was the sort of night and the sort of place he thrived. He stood where behind him was his one-time home, to his left would be Antares’ own if he turned to gallop a while in that direction, and ahead was the gap in the desert rock wall cliffs that tapered down towards a beach that wrapped around towards the Hills again.
He knew this land better than any of his brothers - understood its free and wild movements, placements, weather and nature. He had been the borderguard, the patrol, because they couldn’t think of anything else a creature like him might be good for. He gazes up at the stars as the wind started stroking his heartbeat to a quick pace, like an anxious horse beneath a stern rider aching for the gunshot to release it.
There is a shrill squeal and then he bursts forwards as if hell itself chased his heels.
Only there was never anything that could chase him for the sake of fear for long - always the wind stirred his blood. Drinking it down made him drunk with his legs at full motion and his nostrils thrown wide; bolder than the blazing sun during the height of the day and more defiant than the fullest moon against the dark of the universe beyond the clouds. His red body gleamed cooler with the soft tone of a bright moonlight, his blackened back, mane, tail, and legs countershading him. His great white star that ate so much of his brow captured the glow, though, seeming like the head of a comet blazing across the night sands.
He is fast, had never found another who could match his pace but for a few strides, much less keep up when he meant to get away. What he doesn’t expect at all is that the sound of hooves that approached seemed to at least be intending to try - for all that most horses did not dedicate their entire world and life to the expression of speed as he did himself. When he tips his head to let his eyes see in the direction of the sound - what he sees is hardly a sight to speed from at any other time….
But he bellowed a boyish call of playful challenge - whirling with a madly elated sort of wildness in every fiber of his body language. "Race Me!" the mare is almost upon him, he can see well enough now to determine it is a female, and he hesitates not at all to charge headlong back towards her and away from his destination… a loud guffaw parting his broad smile as he passed her at an even faster speed than he’d been using before. Drunk, indeed.
OF THE LOST ISLANDS WILDS
▻ nine years - arabian - sooty bay rabicano - 15.2 hh ◅