Halyven
| R I X E N Aurelia brushed against me again, and I did not flinch or shy away from her touch. My body tingled a little when our hides touched. I noticed something was off about her, but I couldn’t exactly place it. Without turning my head too much, I scanned her body. It occurred to me as my emerald orbs moved across it that her pale barrel was abnormally round. She was pregnant. Maybe this had something to do with why she was suddenly behaving as though she was attracted to or trying to attract me. Intuition told me that it was for amusement rather than with serious intentions. She was trying to put on a show for me. I could see it in the way she walked, in the way that she smiled at me, even in her golden eyes. I went along with it anyway, flicking my tail in such a way that it lightly grazed her hindquarters. I was not the romantic type, but I knew she was not in it for the romance. Neither was I. However, I did not mind a little bit of harmless flirting. At least it kept the shallow waters of my mind occupied. At the same time, as Aurelia mentioned her own extensive novel, thoughts of my past - my homeland crossed the depths of my mind. Did I have a novel? Like anyone, I had a past, but I did not think mine was anything special or extravagant. Talking about it made me uncomfortable. The feeling had less to do with me caring about what Aurelia thinks. It's derived from my own discomfort with where I've come from, my own feelings of sorrow when thoughts of the destruction of everything I knew rose up again from the catacomb of my memories. After the destruction of my beloved herd, most of my life had been spend wandering. My family was long gone. Those tragic events of my life were years past. They were not fresh on my mind. I pushed them away, and they'd had quite a while to settle into the back of my thoughts. I never spoke much of where I came from or how I had arrived in the Rift, especially not to strangers. I was not an open book, and I intended to keep it that way. The Rift gave me the opportunity to be anything I wanted. Who could I be? What would I say about myself? I could be anything, anyone, that I wanted. No one was keeping track anymore. There were no boundaries to limit me save for my own morals. The real question was how to answer Aurelia. She told me that she was from Helovia. Helovia. The name was familiar to me. I remembered Otem telling me that she had also come to the Rift from Helovia. I supposed that Aurelia was one of the other horses that she had referenced when she spoke of there being others who had fallen through the portal. Aurelia paused. I felt her golden orbs move across my body, their focus tracing its way from my antlered head to my tiger-striped coat to my ashen hooves. Her gaze made my hair stand on end as if it were electric. I did not know exactly how to feel about what was happening, a stag like myself being 'checked out' by a pregnant and possibly hormone-crazed mare. At this point I was not really sure how I felt about everything but regardless, I played along with it. Flirting never hurt anyone, right? Keeping my wits about me, I replied huskily, "My favorite color is green." I did not flinch as she reached out to brush her velvet muzzle against me, instead flashing a crooked smile. "I don't know. What do you want to hear?" I counter, my voice honeyed this time. Funny to think that only moments ago we had been so deep in conversation about repairing the broken spires. It was just talk, anyway. The two of us would never be able to build even a small one alone, and so the spires would have to wait. Aurelia was so close to me now that when I breathed her scent filled my nostrils. We had walked a short distance, stopping in the shade provided by the fragments of another spire. Already the spires seemed like a distant memory. "Talk." they heard me singing and they told me to stop quit these pretentious things and just punch the clock |
