Vadim
stallion | draft x | dunalino pintaloosa | 18hhs
When he had finally made his escape (as much of one as a prisoner could inside a cage), Vadim had retreated to a stand of pines he could see nearby. The water that still clung to his too-thin coat started to have ice form on the tips, along with strands of his mane and tail. The stallion shivered hard, but he would never admit to his discomfort to the pair of them. Nor would he seek any warmth from the herd they had here.
Miriella.
Although her name drifted through his mind, the stallion did not seek her out. He could not scent her here; either because the wind did not carry her scent to him. Or she had not been to this part of the territory in some time. But the pale, nearly sun-bleached white stallion thought it was because she was no longer here. Miriella was not weak, and her fiery temperament led him to believe that she would never have remained trapped here for so long. So, Vadim suffered in silence, enduring the cold as he knew he would be forced to for the season to come.
When her sweet perfume reached him, Vadim was almost asleep, and was sure that it was only in his mind that he thought he smelled her. A frown tugged at his face, and he tried even more desperately to sleep, thinking that it might be an escape from his shivering. To be tucked in the embrace of the roan mare. It grew stronger, and despite how hard he tried, Vadim was forced to open his green eyes. To his amazement, it wasn’t a dream that had made him scent the palomino mare. Instead, she was walking right towards him. Excitement and anxiety made his belly lurch, his muscles drawing tight beneath his skin. Would she know the stallion he had become on Salem? Would she look down on him for his kinder behavior? All absurd thoughts, since there was no way for Miriella to know anything about what he had been through. She had been taken before he had been.
Words bubbled up in his mouth, about to fall free, when suddenly…. She walked right past him. Although she had pointedly made her disapproval obvious, Vadim felt a surge of something inside him. The stallion would have preferred her to yell at him, to bite him as Devi had done. Angry words that have cut to the very soul, would have been better than what she had done.
Ears falling back into the frozen locks of his mane, Vadim briefly forgot his suffering, surging forward after the mare. A gruntal sound escaped him as his shoulder tried to roughly bump into her own, his lips parting as his teeth sought to grab onto the crest of her neck, or even just the wonderful strands of her beautiful mane. For a moment, Vadim forgot he wasn’t in the Lagoon. Forgot he had been recovering from his bitter, hateful mannerisms in the Badlands. Miriella, who had sought his embrace willingly and never tried to escape the Lagoon despite how bad he had been, made Vadim think this is what she wanted from him. He couldn’t stand to think he had ever disappointed her. Surely, he had, if she was still here in this frozen hellhole.
Tossing his head away from her angrily, Vadim came to a sudden halt. His front hoof gave a hard stomp to the snow-covered ground, ice and matted snow making the feathers on his leg stiff. The words he had felt ready to pour from his mouth were gone, and instead his green eyes stared at her with the same hardness he had in the Lagoon. Punish me he thought, glaring at her. Punish me, but don’t you fucking ignore me again. Heart hammering in his chest, longing making it hard to breath, Vadim knew the loving embrace he wanted would never be. Instead, he braced for what fire she might burn him with instead. But at least he wouldn’t be cold.
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