Oathsworn to Ylva
The war had been brutal enough that he’d felt now in his bones that his assault and abduction had been understandable, despite being atrocious. His people had always valued logic in the face of annihilation. And he had, before his defecting, been one of the best of them. He had of course lost some of his edge while traveling with Ylva, leaving him less physically as formidable as the now war-hardened and younger brutes that’d come to fetch him, but in the end he’d survived the war and been given the promise of a life left-alone for his services.
It was many years later, of course, but still - the freedom was his and his disgrace was wiped clean.
It was more than he’d thought possible. He had, of course, grown accustomed to the fact that he was simply going to live forever in disgrace… had even been enraged when they’d come and suggested that if he went away to war with them that it’d be his reward for their eventual success. He had lost his pains over disgrace in the light of love and duty. His duty at that point, though, had become protecting Ylva from the cost of his affection. They would have tried to take her, or kill her trying, if he’d not conceded the fight when one of his abductors shouted out her name.
He swims ashore now, a black leviathan in the surf, with more scars that had not once been there knotted and risen despite its black carpeting hide. His mane and tail are long after his convalescence that made him only so well enough after battle as to swim to the big main island. He couldn’t even begin to know where Ylva had landed, what she thought of him now, but still he had duty and an oath to drive him through his shame and lost dignity.
As heavy hooves hit the sands of the fall’s shoreline, he shakes himself and angles towards the first falls he recalled on the north east of the Crossing Isle’s midriff.
His arrival at the moderately sized waterfall, one with a little sister to its immediate right, with the cave behind the torrent, he sighs. He had not realized how much peace could be found in its familiar sound. The CRASH trickle trickle, CRASH CRASH trickle. The cadence of it made his heartrate find peace, made his aches from the tension of nervous travel loosen even before he went to the falls to wash off the salty remnants of his swim.
It was a cold shower, winter only starting to see the writing on the wall as spring approached, but he only relieved his chill with a short hiss and a harsh snort as he went behind the fall and then walked out through the torrent as he waded into the pool. The immersion sets him a bit to shivering - but it was still leaps warmer than the ocean had been. His eyes crush themselves shut, the aches and pains risen through the pressure of the waterfall across his crest, withers, back, and haunches as he passed through.
He wades free of the falls, of the pool, and onto the bank, a little sorry for salting a water source when running water might yet be scarce in other parts and make animals travel to this thawed waterfall for relief.
OF THE LOST ISLANDS’ WILDS
▻ fifteen years - friesian - heterozygous black - 16.1 hh ◅