to be alone with you, open

[kairi]

She remembered the sea, bitingly cold at times and as warm as her father’s voice at others, and more often than not, dithering in the middle ground, neither here nor there but as turbulent as the spaces behind her wide, blank eyes. It was a constant figure in her life, faceless like all the rest but with a greater presence than even her father, proud and strong – when she was born she had heard it murmuring soothing words from far away, and as she grew older it was always there beside her, a presence defined by temperature and scent and sound as opposed to name, or photograph. But she supposed that if she had to name it, she would have called it ‘strange’; and if she had to give it shape and form, she would have thought of it as a separate kind of darkness; she had words enough to make up for her shortcomings, but hardly more than a handful when it came to tying down something so vast and boundless as the sea. She had no colors. She had limited ideas of pliability, or texture. No, that was Diedrich’s specialty, she recalled with a faint and inexplicably sad smile, stirring at last from her perch on the crest of a bluff to flutter where the waves met the sand. Her feet in that dark, dense band left small, shallow prints, like phases of the moon cycling quickly in and out of focus in her wake, and her hair fluttered behind her in plumes of fallow smoke – and maybe she was a dream as he had been a dream, drifting lazily along the tideline, trailing moonlight while the sun still shone, smoldering where there was no fire. Maybe she was a mirage conjured from the sea’s droning hiss and boom, a nereid crept frail and blind from the depths of the ocean. Or maybe she was just a girl frozen in the surf, her head turned suddenly towards someone looming in the distance, ears pricked, those pale eyes staring flatly at what may or may not have been. “Hello,” she said quietly; and her voice, finely and carefully-tuned and obliging, was like bells tolling mile upon mile away.

it's much too late for me to take a second look.
^{– COMPLETE –}

[Яed]

It was his first, perhaps he should not have gone? His father would look down upon him with stern and angry eyes once caught with wondering off as he did; the distance from his home looming of tall trees was distant and he feared his way lost --- the only way back were to be found by the great King in all his anger and stern voice. He could hear the sting of his words, feel their physical lashing against his hide, but perhaps the risk was worth the reward? The beaches so much different from the black shores he grew upon; ground an almost white color that would bend easily beneath his feet, the texture so much different and foreign to his senses as was the calmness. Everything about his home was angry and hard; the ground beneath his feet scattered with fallen twigs and dirt while the shores were nothing more but rock that stared back up at you in its' darkness. Coeur was simply fascinated by this new place, seemingly stumbling upon the shores in his make believe game of hide and seek with his father; the king was not one for games and the colt longed for the playful interaction with others, but such beings were scarce. His own half sister was much too timid to play at the same level as he while often he was chastised for his rough behavior of the younger filly. It was only the two younger generation living among the trees and with his mothers' disappearance he felt alone. Nothing was certain.

Pawing at the soft ground he could nearly smile in childlike enjoyment; surely his father could not be so angry at this? He was a year old and with it came somewhat a fuller belief in himself, perhaps a stage in which he behaved like a stallion not of his years; older even. He could look after himself for a few moments while his father walked the woods as he did everyday, he did not need to stick so closely to the stallion and be looked so down upon. He already at such a young age despised being ones center of attention was unavoidable with being the heir as well his born body; with horn and odd lavender colored sock on his front left he stuck out so enormously. Giving his head a shake he could feel the weight of the horn send him stumbling to the side almost like a newborn, he was not as fond of his appearance as some. He had seen the surprise in his fathers' eyes when first seen, perhaps his mother left for she was embarrassed by such a son? The notion made him wish to sob, but he would like his father be strong and never left his emotions be so easily seen.

He had nearly missed it; the careful and softly said greeting, but he still managed to catch it in surprise. Looking up he could see ....someone in the distance. Uncertain whether friend or foe, perhaps another stallion he felt the fear grip him. It was his first time alone without the protection of his father; not stallion would dare challenge the King of Auster Wood, King of the Wood, but Coeur was not the King or was he anything impressive in build at such a young age. Unconsciously his back leg raised to take a step back, but the rest of his body would not budge in slight fear of who the stranger was.

[kairi]

Those were eyes that did not see, and so she knew the boy only by his breathing, a series of thrumming inhales that spoke to her of something straddling the hairsbreadth between awe and fear. Awe, she thought with a touch of bemusement, amusement, and fear? Of who, what, when, where, and more than anything else, why? (Certainly not in light of Marijke, not the girl who was more like a smoke-ring than something tangible that you could take up and snap in half, like porcelain.) She couldn’t comprehend why he would fall to either side, not from where she stood, above and beyond and separate; she was no longer the innocent who found wonder in the grit of the beach beneath her hooves, or the way that snow might look as it melts on the tip of her tongue, and the things that made her gasp, made her cry, were different from even a year ago. She had grown up too quickly, contrary to her figure, small and decidedly frail in the sun’s wan glow. But she still remembered what it was like – she supposed she would always remember – she supposed she would never forget – and she could only smile a little more warmly, tilting her slender, carefully-shaped head as she searched unseeingly ahead, her eyes like chips of milky glass in the face of a doll. “Hello, it’s alright,” came her voice again, the same smooth soprano chimes ringing a little wider now, a little louder than they had dared before. After all, there was certainty now that she was not alone there by the side of the sea, and there wasn’t even a trace of hostility in the air that rushed softly through her hair, through the thin spaces between her long, curling lashes. One step forward she took, her wet hooves sinking into the dry and powder-fine sand further up the shoreline. Then another, and a third before she stopped, keeping just on the fringes of what she thought was a child’s comfort-zone. It wouldn’t do to frighten him away; if he was lost, what would she do with herself; if he needed help, how could she turn him away? “My name is Marijke, and you?”

it's much too late for me to take a second look.
^{– COMPLETE –}

[Яed]

Her soft voice seemed to soothe out his own nerves; calm him enough that he wasn't frozen in both fear as well tense enough to bolt instantly. Being able to eliminate her from his mind as a threat Coeur seemed to almost stand somewhat taller; lifting his chin to the sky while snorting like some stallion well beyond his years he nearly pranced a bit closer to the mare, previous caution long forgotten in the young juveniles mind. "I am Coeur, first born son of Goer." He preached as if the title were something to be proud of, yet in the young colts mind it was; who would not look at his father as the king he were? In his own world and thoughts everyone knew of the great king of the wood and those who did not were merely ignorant.

Tilting his head to the side he observed her oddly; her eyes were milky and he had never seen such things. He was somewhat surprised at the mare as she did not stare..or it seemed even looked at him. He believed perhaps she was ignoring him which he seemed to dislike even more than being the center of ones attention or being stared at. Pinning his rather small ears he snorted while again taking a small step for-ward. "What..are you looking at?"

[kairi]

The names did not register with her as significant; they were distant and far-spun, foreign words that were rooted somewhere other than her beloved north, strange as they balanced on the tip of her tongue and stranger still as she swallowed them down and tucked them away. Would he think of her as merely ignorant then? Would he look at her like a lowly and unfortunate soul wrung from the gutter, soft and pretty but sadly, unenlightened? She didn’t know. She knew very little of him or his thoughts, only that he was young and proud as all young things must be, and that while she could no longer remember what it was like to be that way (“Kender du min far? Han er kongen!”), that she should oblige him. So with a murmur and a careful folding of her long, slender neck, “An honor,” she murmured, a smile playing at the corners of her mouth, her long baby hair sliding against the grain of her skin as she dipped into a bow. ‘What … are you looking at?’ The portrait of serenity, she managed a faint laugh and a shake of the head, her mane fluttering momentarily in the breeze. “Nowhere in particular,” she spoke, that quaint laughter lingering in the syllables, half amused and half apologetic. “I see very little.”

it's much too late for me to take a second look.
^{– COMPLETE –}

[Яed]

He was merely curious now, her slight bow nothing of foreign concept to him as in Auster it was required behavior for one to treat royalty in such way...but her explanation of her stare, or lack there of puzzled him. Besides himself there were no others in his home that had deformities of any kind, Coeur being the only and making him in a sense unqiue and rare which he quite agreed too; his ego somewhat boosted from the notion him being of the only one, but he was unaware of the world outside the tall trees he grew up around and this being his first outing so far off everything was nearly alien to him. It was a different world outside Auster and as much as it fascinated him he preferred the familiarity of the trees and leaves, even the black shores of their own shores to this newer and odd one. "Are you deformed?" He ran eyes over her in searching question while statement sounded more as though demand for an answer, but he meant no harm by his words, it was commonly talked about among the herd and those sometimes of deformed state were regarded as lesser than others; not often, but it was simply the rules of his fathers' herd and the question as ordinary to him as if asking her about the current weather.

"Does it hurt?" Coeur seemed to be as blunt as ever while taking step for-ward, still staring intensely at her milky eyes; he could not imagine there could be no pain with such an odd physical trait; sometimes his own mutations caused him pain. Horn upon his head would sore at the base if he scraped and smashed the appendage into a solid surface.