drops in the river, hud

[kairi]

Birds followed her wherever she went, if she asked it of them. Perhaps she intrigued them, the delicate, doe-like girl who appeared on the banks of the stream with her chin tilted up, a few strains of a whippoorwill’s (and a nightingale and a thrush and a mockingbird’s) song curling off of her bottom teeth – she was certainly a sight to behold, all legs and lashes and long baby hair, her antennae twitching now and then as they swayed in a soft northerly breeze – regardless of what it was or what it wasn’t, they enjoyed each other’s company, speaking of meaningless things as she dipped her neck to sip quietly at the water rushing through the woods. What to do today, she wondered, peering into her pale green eyes as they blinked disjointedly at her from the depths of the river. Winter was coming, it was true, and it was likely time that she moved to the warmer parts of the woods, where the snow would not fall as heavily as it did around the Glade; with every day lost she could feel the cold seeping through the air, plucking the leaves from the dogwood trees and stripping the oak and alder bare, pooling at the base of her spine in a tremble that made it difficult to sleep through the night and even more difficult to wake in the morning. Would that she could follow the birds, she mused, raising her head and shaking her neck. The lightness and the resounding silence astounded her – she expected the birds that typically perched on her shoulders to sound in protest, but it seemed they had flown away as she was thinking, and the air, absent of their cries, was heavy. A twig snapped underfoot, several metres away by the shiver in her feathered ears, and she froze, her eyes flooding with fearful white light. Run, whispered her instincts, sharpened on her tell-tale heart, run and do not look back – but she could not move.

WHEN THE FULL MOON TURNS WHITE,
THAT'S WHEN I'LL COME HOME.

[Hud Levine]

Rhys didn't suppose he could spend another day in Auster. Not with those two roans ruining his life so. In truth he regretted leaving Jemaine, but he would be fine. Audrey would take care of him no matter what Aquila had to say about it. Besides, it seemed as though the hot-headed stallion was out of her hair and left her to raise her baby in disgust. Didn't matter to Rhys.

The blue and green stallion entered Carlin with a new perspective on things. He never planned to leave the biome, so he went ahead and stuck with the next forest he could find - this one. It seemed suitable. Plausible for his purposes. Plus, now there would be no threat of a herd leader finding and butting him out of his land. Sutton was long gone anyway - he had no real ties to Auster anymore. These new woods would do just fine.

He trotted briskly, unwilling to waste any time in exploring the perimeter of the grounds. The pine trees were far fewer here, and the temperature much higher. It was comfortable, though not altogether normal for Rhys. Not yet, anyway. The stallion bounded rather heavily, his head held high and his legs lifting with every step so as not to get caught on anything as his pace quickened.

Rhys paid no mind to the ground he stepped on as he moved, slowing slightly as the promise of water flowed through his flaring nostrils. His gait made the transition from trot to walk gracefully as he slowed to a stop in order to pinpoint the location of the unfamiliar smells. Amongst the scents was one he knew quite well - the smell of a female. His attention turned this way and that as he searched for her, his thirst for "company" far surpassing his thirst for water. Spying only her white barrel from between obscuring bushes, Rhys could tell he was in the right place at the right time.

Oh yes, he would like his new home very well.

OOC: Wasn't sure if you were planning on that twig cracking to be Rhys' doing or not, so I went with it, if that's alright with you. :3 Also, this post sounded kinda sinister now that I reread it, but don't worry; she shall be fine. <3

[kairi]

She had exaggerated the silence – all around her the birds were humming, composing their last songs for the year, and it was only within the confines of her sweet head that the noise tapered away into a deafening stillness that threatened to consume her. She could hear nothing, despite the sensitivity of her antennae as each delicate filament filtered the air for sound – even her heartbeat was quelled in favor of the fear that gripped her, the soft and nonsensical fear that possesses the lonely; she had been on her own for so long that she could not imagine what to do in another’s company, and she had not truly spoken for what felt like centuries since her family had left the wood for brighter territory. (Death, she knew, but in the manner of a young and invincible and frightened creature, she went around the word and ignored it completely.) What to say, how to say it, when to curtsy and when to smile? Etiquette was lost on her now, the wild little girl with her blonde hair and her riveting eyes that flashed from gold to white and back before settling someplace in the middle. As fearful as she was, there was a sense of excitement that lingered in the most remote corners of her soul, and she clutched at them feebly as the trespasser broke through the final barricade and made himself visible – she backed away instinctively, although she would not realize it until later – in all of his regal attire; the emotion, now that she had a reason to put a word to it, was ‘apprehension.’ She was apprehensive of the stranger, green and pavonated blue, a hundred eyes peaking from the coils of his mane and tail, a hundred eyes to confuse and intimidate her. What to do, she thought and panicked, tucking her chin close and blinking rapidly in her discomfort. Hello, she knew she ought to say. But all she could offer was a stray and tentative peal of music, distinctly the call of a meadowlark, before once again falling into the strained quiet.

WHEN THE FULL MOON TURNS WHITE,
THAT'S WHEN I'LL COME HOME.

[Hud Levine]

The mare did not seem all that accepting of his presence.

Rhys didn't close the obvious gap between them, but instead made sure he stopped his approach in a place where he could clearly see her. His black eyes ran over her doe-like figure, scanning each perfect curve and wisp of feathery hair on her mane and strangely lovely tail. What really made him stare were the plumes coming out of her head from behind her darling red ears. They seemed to serve more of a purpose than simply adornments, but what purpose Rhys couldn't be sure.

The angel opened her mouth and let out a melodious sound that he hadn't expected. He felt like a new stallion just seeing her, really. All thoughts from before seemed inconsequential when faced with such perfect beauty. Rhys managed to keep his jaw shut, though how even the Mother didn't know. The ocellated stallion kept his focus fully on her and his facial features followed. His eyes and ears couldn't find the energy, let alone the desire, to turn away. His breast filled with air to its full capacity and let it all out slowly and carefully, as if letting out too much at one time would blow her away from his sight.

Rhys couldn't find words, but he knew they would have to come or all of this would be a memory in a matter of minutes. "...Good day, Ma'm..." It felt unnatural. Ordinarily, he'd waste no time when he met a new mare. Rhys bowed his head for a moment before bringing it up slowly, his green mane falling before him and settling at his neck's side.

OOC: Yeah, went a little crazy here. Rhys is in love already. Dunno if that's good or bad for either one of them. xDD

[kairi]

She felt pinned by his dark gaze, pinned through her slender wasp’s waist and into the red oak’s unyielding flesh, and so she too became unyielding. She could only stare back at him guilelessly as he traced the soft, sloping lines of her body, her wide eyes luminous and unsettling in the dappled shade. Speak, she implored herself, tell him to go or tell him to stay, say anything – but it was a deep-rooted fear that choked her, a fear that stretched back since she was young and not quite so alone as she was now; visitors to the wood had come and gone, but they had never seen her, and it troubled her to be so visible now, so susceptible to his scrutiny as if beneath the lens of some great, terrifying glass. By all means, she should have gone by now, disappeared into the topiary like a mote of dust, or a breath, or a dandelion tuft. But in the same vein as that blazing fear was a wild and closeted curiousity, and so Terolusa, foolish as only a young and wild thing can be foolish, stayed. ‘Good day, Ma’am … ’ Her eyes instantaneously flashed white and then, upon the realization that he’d neither made a threat or had the intention of it (a greeting, wasn’t it? but it’d been so long since she’d had use for such things, she couldn’t remember what came next), clouded over with a pale and milky gold. Good day, Ma’am, she repeated to herself, good day, good day. Yes, the day was good. It streamed through the fingers of the trees in kaleidoscopic patterns, warmed her white skin and dusted the birdsong with sugar. For what felt like the first in hours she blinked, her long lashes sweeping once, twice – and when she again looked upon him her irises were slightly more green than before, shifting slowly towards the seafoam norm. “Why,” she began slowly. Her voice was pleasantly low, albeit sharp in some places; it sounded so much like another bird call that perhaps he would not understand, and so she spoke more loudly, nervously. “Why are you here?”

WHEN THE FULL MOON TURNS WHITE,
THAT'S WHEN I'LL COME HOME.

SORRY FOR THE MASSIVE DELAY. x ___ x
also, rhys is so cute, ahahaha ~ ♥

[Hud Levine]

[atrb=border,0,true][cs=7][bg=1a4480] Her eyes... What was wrong with them? Rhys couldn't look away, even to look at her two red plumes. The mare's eyes, although a good trot's distance away, struck him differently each time she moved. Were his own playing tricks on him? She seemed to ponder a while on his greeting, as if it was unfamiliar to her. The stallion, glued to the stranger, hung on the few words she managed to utter, almost too quietly to hear. It gave him a reasonable excuse to inch a little closer. Not wanting to scare her off, he took baby steps at infrequent intervals. "Why?" he responded quietly and with a smirk. "Why, Ah wuz driven out'a me home." He kept his voice low, like hers. Rhys spoke the truth; how could he not to such perfect, innocent ears? Another scan of her frame and Rhys almost lost his control. The peacock was a master at keeping his cool demeanor, though. Then again, he'd never been so tested in his years. Who knew where this encounter would end up?

[kairi]

Perhaps it was not the correct question to ask, she mused, antennae curling back momentarily as he stared. At one point she had lived for the silence, punctuated every here and there with a trill of high, treble notes, but here it was not so becoming; it fell heavily all around her, seeped into the sunlight, and again she felt the desire to tear away from it all and disappear into the maze of trunks and moss and winding river. She had no obligation to stay and she supposed wryly, anxiously, that it was not good for her health to feel so strung up and tangled. But the moment she began to turn her willowy, boneless body away, he spoke, and again she was immobilized: ‘Why, Ah wuz driven out’a me home,’ he said, and she tilted her head fractionally as she sorted out the syllables. Driven away … from home. Her ears fell against her skull immediately, the depths of her eyes flooding with a bright and sympathetic eggshell white. If there was anything he could have done to convince her to linger, it was plucking the heart-strings labeled, ‘belonging,’ and, ‘safety’; she could not even begin to imagine losing her home, not when she’d never known anything else in all of her years. I’m so sorry,” she murmured, and in the trembling lyric ran an undercurrent of nightingale song, as sweet and mournful as the sun setting. “That is … terrible.”

WHEN THE FULL MOON TURNS WHITE,
THAT'S WHEN I'LL COME HOME.

[Hud Levine]

[atrb=border,0,true][cs=7][bg=1a4480] The ocellated male stood at a reasonable distance from the feathery princess now - easy to speak comfortably. The female had a way about her - a wistful, soft, and even mesmerizing way. Rhys could hardly fathom what she was, really. She was unlike the rest in both air and figure. To understand her would be to understand the wind - impossible. Already the mare's foreign ways captured his attention in a special way. His cocky, oversized ego was no match for her variegated eyes or her soft-spoken, genuine words. Most mares melted before him. It seemed the tables had turned today. The once brilliant feathers intertwined in his green, lustrous mane felt as if to wilt at her words. "It is, in'it?" Rhys had gotten over Aquila's wrath pretty quickly, accepting his retreat into a different forest as the next path in his life. This girl made it all a reality. He'd been told to leave and he'd done just that. Rhys had left his home, his mare, and his son all to appease a stallion who wasn't even the king of the wood. How petty of him. Rhys' head cocked now, his gaze drifting from the flitting mare to the ground below her, his black eyes seemingly staring into space as he thought. Rhys felt cheated, if nothing else. He should return to Auster. Rhys looked back up. "You're a right nice broad... Ennyone evah told jou that?" he asked with a smile. After all the thoughts she'd brought up in his mind, Rhys hardly thought of her as an object of desire now. Well, almost hardly. He could never truly neglect his true calling, Rhys thought with a grin. She had shown him empathy even though they'd never met. It was like receiving an apology from the Mother herself. Awe-inspiring. OOC: Poor guy. He's so... colloquial. xD

[kairi]

She did not feel at home, but she did not feel as if she should leave, either; the discomfort she felt initially had lessened to the point where she could hold still and simply look at him, batting her chameleon’s eyes somberly as he spoke. ‘It is, in’it?’ he said, and she nodded her head once, replying with a simple, “Yes,” that communicated, in a single word, every sympathy she could have spared for a mere stranger: there was a chorus of larks in that word, and the call of a turtledove and a few carefully chosen chords of wren and chickadee. She was terrified of being driven out of the wood – she would not survive in the burning sunlight, on the coarse dirt roads and who knows what else, lurking in the darkness of the unknown; to see him, as strange as she if not stranger, living on past his exile was both remarkable and cloying. Was she weak? Was she simply unsuited to anything but the cloister of the flowering dogwood, the safety of what few acres composed her universe? Part of her – the part that, like the wilderness, was omnipresent – answered just as bluntly before. Yes. There was no place for her past the treeline. Yes. She would die if she left, a moth fluttering haplessly into the flame, burning her wings and knowing no better. Yes, yes, yes. ‘You’re a nice broad … ’ He interrupted her thoughts, the peculiarity of his voice attracting her attention as it had before. Terolusa tilted her head, the fronds of her antennae ruffling in a soft breeze, tasting and sorting the syllables until they became words familiar to her. ‘Ennyone evah told jou that?’ Her eyes narrowed some in confusion, ears flitting back momentarily as her eyes swirled into a soft, hazy goldenrod. Broad was an adjective, she mused, staring at his grinning blue mouth, and her first conclusion was that he thought her as such. But that couldn’t be right, could it? She shook her head deftly, blinking twice (her eyes the color of jade now, halfway between serenity and utter disarray). “I cannot say that one has,” she said slowly, peering at him intently, the smallest and the most secluded of smiles passing across her face. “Shall I say you are too kind?”

WHEN THE FULL MOON TURNS WHITE,
THAT'S WHEN I'LL COME HOME.

[Hud Levine]

[atrb=border,0,true][cs=7][bg=1a4480] It was the simple kindess of the mare that so baffled Rhys. The sweet innocence of nature's child radiated through this small white-and-red mare, the blue stallion could see it. How something could be so sweet and small was beyond all measure in his mind. He was not used to such untouched beauty. The commonplace mares he usually sought refuge with paled in comparison to the beauty and sweetness displayed before him. She seemed so scared but at the same time so willing to learn. Her speech was eloquent, her movements were dazzling in soft clarity; it seemed unfair to keep so many perfect attributes in one small female. Unfair to the other females, that was. Rhys' restraint was again beginning to wear thin. All thoughts of her as simply another mare had left his mind again. The ugly truth was beginning to show itself to him: he would need to have her now in front of the Mother and everyone or take his leave immediately. The fire inside him burned stronger than it ever had before in his life. With her final perfect question, an almost shaking Rhys smiled one last time, letting out a small exhalation and nodding. Was this what those ignorant males had spoken of so many times in the past? The stallion had, until this day, discounted all manner of "love" ever spoken about to him. Still, he could not imagine that living in a constant state of need and desire constituted "love". He took one passionate step forward with every intention of relieving his need. Catching himself, Rhys knew he'd made the wrong decision. He looked down at his hoof, his ears hard against his skull. Rhys took a long breath and looked back up to her, his eyes watching every curve of her beautiful face. "I'm sorry," he uttered, taking two steps back and turning his gaze back down to the ground. He turned to go, making the better decision of the two...