for she had eyes but saw little

He ascends on lighter feet than he came down with. Something has lifted from him. He cannot name it. Maybe the burden was obligation. Maybe affection. But as he journeys back up to greet the trees, he sees with clarity the painful green of the forest. He hears without feeling all the noises of the little animals, the sigh of wind through the branches and the leaves. He is moving again. He should not have been still. He will not be, again. Seiji: a shadow wending between the dull colors of the trunks. From a certain angle, he is more a deer than he is a horse: a long, slim creature. Delicate limbs picking their way over soft soil and leaf litter. Every now and then, his ears prick toward something and he pauses, listening. But he always begins again. From the outside, he looks hollow: everything brilliant within him sinking deep, coalescing inward. From the outside, he is a sharp blackness, an intruder on the branches and the vines. Inside…. Inside, he thinks. Where next? He hasn’t explored the forest yet, but he soon will. And then he will move on again, forward and forward, relentlessly. Until he finds what he needs. This place will not trap him. So there is a strange, grim emptiness about his eyes when the rain begins. He doesn’t quite feel it. It’s there, in the back of his mind: tiny hands drumming the taut skin of his haunches. Plastering his mane into a thin film. From the right side of his withers, the strange, glowing slash casts a faint light into the weather. On the other side, the scarified wing shifts with the muscle beneath. Forward, he thinks. Only: forward. Then there is something white ahead. White: like freshly fallen snow. Like the hottest flame. Seiji pauses mid-stride and his ears come up in the same moment. Curiosity flickers into his eyes and he breathes in like a man breaking the surface of a lake. The smell is just: wet. He doesn’t know her. She is like an injured dove, prone on the ground. She is like fire, golden accents limning her body. His eyes are bright. His long neck stretches out; his head tilts. Curious. A little concerned. Is she wounded? To be lying there that way? Then: movement in periphery. Seiji flinches; his body goes tense as if to jump away, but he doesn’t quite jump. Once he turns toward the noise, he recognizes who it is. His mouth opens as if to shape around the word, but no sound comes out. Just the thought passing across his mind: Rixen! Rixen, who belongs to Halyven. Now Seiji’s weight shifts back as if he might at any moment wheel around and leave. He doesn’t, but the possibility is there. There in his mind. Roscorro followed him; Rixen did not. He isn’t sure what the antlered creature thinks of him. He doesn’t know (ever) if he’s safe here. But he is concerned about the girl. He gestures toward her again, waiting for her to move, or for Rixen to speak.