By River We Come to Spirit You Away

Pixie Frost · 08-14-2011, 01:16 PM

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Word Count: 843

The silver lady’s small frame stood against the door of Magic’s stall, breathing in the familiar scent of hay and oats that accompanied the stable. She always wished her horse goodnight before retiring to her bedroom, and on clear summer nights like this she often stayed later than intended and just look out at the starry sky through the stable door. The stallion’s even breaths were sometimes enough to lull her to sleep, but tonight was different; she felt more restless than usual, for some reason. Her violet eyes glanced outside again and could barely see the outline of the manor, not too far off from the wooden building where she stood. The window of the library glowed dimly from a lantern light; she chuckled softly, guessing that Jazper was staying up late to read one of his books.

Her amusement was interrupted by a distinct howl—one of the Marino boys, it sounded like—that pierced the steady silence that Pixie had gotten so used to. The howl was repeated, and after a while was joined by two others, but she didn’t need to hear it again to know that something was wrong. Swiftly unlocking the stall door, she let out a short bark to alert Magic, who was already startled by the howling and only got more so by the bark. He skittered towards the back corner of his stall, whinnying nervously. “Come on, Magic, now is not the time to be skittish,” she growled. But the horse refused to budge. Sighing in frustration, she raised a paw and lightly grazed the stallion’s belly with her claws. That did the trick; he bolted out of the stall door and halted shortly, his huge body turning this way and that as he tried to find a way out of the tiny stable.

After she managed to calm him down a little with some gentle but rushed words, Pixie quickly looked around for any sort of objects she could arm herself with and settled on one of the hoof picks she kept by the door. They were made from short metal bars she had found in Halifax, bent about one-third of the way down so she could use it to clean out the dirt and muck that got trapped on her horse’s hooves. They weren’t the ideal weapon of choice, especially since the ends of them were quite blunt, but she didn’t trust herself to handle a knife or a sword and she wouldn’t be able to find one quickly enough anyways. If need be, she could shift into Secui form, which would be her more ideal style of fighting.

As she led her horse out of the stable as quickly as she could without spooking him enough to take off on his own, a huge figure ran past her towards where the howl was coming from. She recognized him immediately as Jazper, both by his size and how ridiculously armed he was compared to her single hoof pick; through the dark, she could see the gleam of a huge sword as well as several smaller weapons strapped to his waist. Muttering to herself about never learning how to properly use so much as a butter knife, Pixie noticed another, four-legged form run after Jazper; the barely-visible dark fur had her guessing that it was Savina. Quickly she mounted her steed and sped off after them.

They were far behind the others, but the stallion could go much faster than any of those on foot, and Pixie managed to keep her packmates in sight. As they got closer to the river and the emerging shadows of the intruders, she saw another pale form that she recognized as another Dreamer, a young male, one she had seen before but had never taken the time to get to know very well; she wasn’t even sure of his name. Then she could make out the figure of a wolf raising his bow, and as she got closer she could see several arrows flying towards her packmates before the archer made his way towards Savina. Her eyes locked on the attacker with a fury that she had never felt quite like before, she urged her horse to go as quickly as possible. His long strides swiftly covered the distance between them and the fight, and as the wolf raised his arms up, Magic galloped up right next to him, skidding to a stop a foot away. Neighing loudly, the stallion rose up on his back legs before his rider could stop him, his front hooves pawing the air in front of him. Pixie was gripping onto his neck for dear life and burying her face into his mane, rendering her incapable of seeing what her horse was doing. She did know that if Magic managed to catch the archer with one of his hooves, it could mean broken bones, a concussion, or worse. At the very least, if the hooves just managed to nick the wolf, it could mean an open wound or him getting knocked out.

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