He existed, the same way the shadows and the wind and the rivers did. He was as much a part of Atlantis as the slowly rotting leaves beneath his feet, tethered as he was to the jungle's shadowy embrace. He knew the mother's pulse the same way he knew his own, could feel it thrumming up from beneath his hooves; could count the rhythm of her breathing in the tides and read her moods from the shifts in her countenance.



Wulfric loved and loathed the mother jungle the same way he had loved and loathed his own mother; but where Vanya could not have cast him aside any faster, too ashamed of his illness to pretend to love him the way she had her others, the verdant jungle embraced him too tightly, wrapping sinuous arms around his rail-thin figure and refusing to let go.



She was angry today, the tips of her tall branches thrashing in a vicious wind that whistled far overhead. Peering beyond the thinner trees nearest the shoreline, he could see slivers of a dark and stormy sky, which would explain why the other forest floor denizens had all scurried into burrows. The ocean and the mother were often at odds in autumn and in spring as if the potential of new life in both seasons stirred a frenzy in their hearts that could only be solved with unrepentant violence.



Wulfric breathed a sigh and turned away from the temptation of the beach and the lure of her danger. He was not often granted daytime reprieves from his shadowy prison, but the risk of the Ocean stepping beyond her bounds and sweeping over him as it once had the pale beaches of the Shore kept his hooves on solid ground. The night would soon come and likely soothe the jungle's temper, freeing him once more to wander until the sun began its vicious ascent in the sky.



The soft scuff of hooves that were not his own drew his eye deeper into the shadows, and he followed their maker for a number of steps, letting the scent of her passing wash over him. Wulfric knew most of the Ridge's residents by sight, by sleeping position preference, by the company they kept, and so he knew this shadow-wreathed mare was not of the Ridge herself. She smelled of sun and sand, of warmth and light. She smelled of what he imagined the beach must be like at midday, full of light and laughter and joy.



"Where are you going?" He finally murmured, after a few long, quiet moments of trailing after her. Wulfric had not spoken aloud to another creature since Faolain, and his voice was scratchy from disuses, the words gruff despite the soft heart they exposed. He tried to keep some distance back, to keep some shadows wreathed across his grotesquely marked body, as if they alone would protect him from her judgment.

Colt - Young - Mutt - 16h wfg - Silver Black Overo - Rougaru x Vanya