Aldebaran
[al DEH bur rahn]
✮ no wife ✮
▻ no children ◅
He had always been the reckless son, There were Seven sons that had been born to their father - two of which had been sent to live amidst foreign lands as bargaining chips for power. The one immediately his junior was so much like Antares (and yet so much tamer) that he wouldn’t have thought they needed Aminah to take the throne. Antares only let this wildness show when he was with his Wife - or so it was chuckled in whispers. For Rigel, only storytelling expressed it in that stallion. Stories so vast and long and detailed so as to make one feel the places and people were old friends in one’s own homeland. The upbringing of a warrior too early had transmuted Atair’s wildness into a savage rage that bubbled beneath the surface, held down only by his love of Eness. It was different for him. It was all.
Every cell, every choice, every follicle. Not a single piece of him was to be tamed, not a single thought of his was to be quashed. He revered his freedom with a kind of selfish passion that made the brothers sure that only the Winds themselves could be wife to such a stallion. Only the air they breathed could truly bind him, contain him, force him to devote himself to its presence. Drunk on that same inscensing wind, Nyimara can witness the fullest expression of that state of being -- when mortal horse became the Avatar of Shu and overrode all diplomacy and logic.
Logic would have told him that this may be a mare of the ruler here. Logic would have told him that he was technically trespassing and she could be a border patrol. Logic would have said that mares were thinking creatures and not many could be so drunk on the race as to take his overture kindly.
Diplomacy would say to ask her to his bed, using words and cloying bodily discussion. Diplomacy would say to ask her if she belonged to another - though her withers remained unmarked, by the scarring bite of a husband, according to Miran tradition… that she may well not be of the belief of such things and so he should be cautious. Diplomacy would say that he introduce himself, find her name or at least the name of her people.
None of this mattered to him-- nor, it would seem, did it occur to her that it should matter. His teeth make purchase on her withers without even a flutter of her body to tell him she’d seen him lunge at all. The proximity and lack of racing winds swells her scent in his nostrils until it is all that he can think of, smell, sense - other than her body suddenly beneath his. He spends what energy he had for the race she’d interrupted on her body, be that a punishment or simply a fair trade, he hadn’t much care.
The touch of her back and his chest as he adjusts to bite higher up on her neck - away from the claiming dangers of the withers meant for husbands - is the last conscious decision he is able to make before he is only flesh and instinct and nothing that could remotely be called sober or less than carnal. She had been too receptive, too full of the season, too willing to match the rise of his fire for him to think.
When he falls from her, he is still high - but the drunkenness had left and all that remained is the still commanding scent of her, the swath of moon and stars above them, and the sweat-wetted sands beneath their bodies. He can see, finally, where their sweat had left a lather across her back, where his teeth had wrapped into her mane and caused a small tangle, where their hooves had kicked angry bites into the sand. It is all he can do not to rub his chest into her hip, to rest his chin across her, but the moon had shifted its placement in the sky and he knew it to be too lucky already that they had not been caught by whatever patrol there might come to check on the sanctity of boundaries he had crossed in the name of family. "I do not think I can delay." His voice is a groan, breathy with heaving breaths, but closer to a whisper and still slightly slurred from the haze of the adrenaline. "It has been a long time since anyone had been able to race alongside me-- but there will be those who do not know I come only for my brother, windchaser, and your rulers patrol will certainly not give me room to race our hearts again here."
He drags a rake of teeth over her withers but then coils his legs with a parting, "I would chase the wind with you again, someday, if all goes well for my brother and your leader." And then he lets the coil of his legs spring free and he exposes to her the meaning of living life only for the race, for running until your heart might explode out of your ribs and flesh. He would need to make it to the Hills borders by nightfall. Behind him he leaves a woman he felt a kinship to, a wild memory he’d never forget, and the danger of pursuit by any stallions who thought he’d taken her virtue or their chances.
OF THE LOST ISLANDS WILDS
▻ nine years - arabian - sooty bay rabicano - 15.2 hh ◅