living beyond your years, acting out all their
fears
He has not returned to this place, since that fateful day when he’d first laid eyes on his queen. Starscream tucks himself in a treeline toward the southern edge of the sprawling meadow, head bowed low to graze. But it is merely a front, one he adopts to avert most attention. He is here in search of something, and though there is no doubt in him that there are none alive that can catch his interest as wholly as Naydra had, he is hopeful that this time spent away from the dragon he left coiled in her den of thorns will be worth whatever ire he stirs for having been away longer than anticipated.
They come in ones and twos, sometimes small groups. The mares with foals tagging at their heel, he doesn’t ever acknowledge, for he has little interest in any child not his own, and he knows well enough that mothers can be awfully protective. Here, in the meadow, anyone can come to wander. And anyone could be watching. While the thought of a scuffle with a territorial stallion would be exciting, that is not his intention. He would fight soon enough, but he’d allow Naydra the honour of telling him who and when and where. To protect Farosh, he’d fight with all that he is and ever could be. But not yet, not now.
He has a promise to keep, first.
As the sky above him darkens, and Starscream lifts his honeyed gaze. A crooked smile settles upon his mouth, and he falls to watching several lone mares pass by undisturbed. The first flickers of light appear upon the horizon, though distant enough still that no sound reaches him. Starscream feels the air quicken, and scents the promise of rain. Soon, the meadow will largely be vacated, he supposes, with those who remain returning to their homes before the storm breaks upon the Crossing, or else (wisely) seeking shelter elsewhere on the island.
But Starscream is in no hurry. There is still much for him to observe and learn, he feels. A few still linger within his vicinity, but he ignores the handful in favour of just one - a lone mare, her coat a dark umber, with white speckling her pretty face and chest. Deciding to press his luck, because she is by far the most exquisite thing to have crossed his path here today, Starscream ambles up to her, chin tucked a moment as he eyes her with appreciation up close. “The storm is almost upon us,” he says by way of introduction, choosing not to compliment her, because it’s already clear in his expression how admiring of her physical beauty he is.
All that matters to the cunning copper stallion now is getting a taste of the mind and a sense of the personality behind the beauty.
“Would you care to join me?” Starscream continues, half turning away from her back to the slightly more sheltered and private spot at the edge of the meadow where he’d been lurking moments earlier. “Or…” A snaking bolt of lightning splits the sky as from where they stand it appears to reach toward the peak of the mountain to the north before disappearing behind it, and Starscream waits for the rumble of thunder to reach them. The earth beneath his hooves does not tremble yet, but he tilts his sooty muzzle towards the meadow plains as the wind picks up and he shuffles a white-capped hoof, leaving the question unspoken, so it instead smoulders in his hungry, honey-gold eyes.
It would be some minutes before the rain fell upon the meadow, and there was nothing quite like the way a wild race against the forces of nature stirred something in the spirit and made one truly feel alive.
xoxo
STARSCREAM