where fields burn westward

Myrika Tears · 01-05-2012, 05:50 AM

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(1052)
The blanked out stuff is spoilerific if you haven't yet read The Stand by Stephen King, so I blacked it out. <_<; Not very important, skeep skeep. Also skip to the third to last paragraph; everything before it is tl;dr SoSu dribble. c;

Myrika is by Kiri!

Myrika had been riding practically since she had acquired the ability to form hands. Eira was far from the first horse Myrika had ever interacted with, but the blue roan was Myrika's own horse, and her very first one. If the tawny hybrid was lucky, she would not need another horse in her lifetime. As far as she knew, Luperci and equines had comparable lifespans -- though the horse might yet outlive her. Myrika's lips quirked in a faint smile at that thought, and she reached to scratch absently at the horse's shoulder.

Eira did not seem to feel the cold, and the shoulder beneath Myri's hand was thick with winter's fur. The coyote supposed desert-bred horses would need blanketing and extra protection in this weather, and she wouldn't leave even a northerly horse unprotected through the night's cold, but Eira did not require a constant added layer even in winter's coldest depths. The horse was rather unlike her owner in this manner. Myrika had balled herself in a cut and sewn pelt. Her legs, arms, and head were uncovered, but her torso was quite warm, thankfully.

Her level of comfort with this horse was magnitudes greater than it had been when she'd been thrown in the storm. Myri now believed she could keep Eira -- and any horse that did not have pure brimstone running through its veins -- under control in the face of such stresses. Perhaps she overestimated her skill, as the young tended to, but one needed only look at her riding and the relationship she crafted with her animal. Though low speech was not among the coyote's talents, she may as well have spoken commands to the blue roan, such was her skill with rein and slight pressures of the leg. Most movements were automatic; Eira seemed to infrequently require direction, but Myrika was unaware of the number of slight motions and squeezes she was making without even realizing she was doing such. Myrika might have been a centaur in a past life, if only such things existed in reality.

It seemed the humans were fond of mixing reality and fantasy, however. While Myrika realized some things were fictional -- centaurs, for example -- other works of fiction were taken as historical fact by the rusty-shaded woman. Her favorite tattered book, for example, was an entirely fictional plague, in actuality some entirely alternate universe's plague. It had nothing to do with Luperci and had never even happened, at least not on this plane of existence, yet Myrika had taken The Stand as an account of reality.

She often thought of the book, particularly Stu's exit from the contagion facility. Myrika had not enjoyed any of the scenes set within the facility, and in fact, the story had set a deep fear of such authority in her. She could not imagine being forcibly contained by Ezekiel, shut into a room in the mansion to die of illness. More moving than those scenes, however, had been the exit from the facility. Myri's particularly vivid imagination recreated the long walk down the corridors, past the dead and dying, and she had needed to set the book down in the middle of the scene. Even now, she rarely re-read these passages, as she was wont to do with much of the rest of the novel.

Her daydreams came to a rather strange end -- rather than an abrupt snap, as was generally the case when one was startled from thought, Myrika became slowly more aware of her surroundings. The forest seemed to come back into sharp focus, and in a few moments, she was on high alert. The only missing piece of this puzzle was why -- quiet alarm bells had begun at the back of her head upon passing north of the foothills, but Myri had dismissed them, or had she even been aware of them in the first place?

Biting her lip, the coyote slowly pulled the horse to a stop, which Eira obeyed readily enough. The horse was on edge, too -- Myrika had yet to discover why, until a voice startled her nearly from the saddle. She did not yelp, but her cerulean-hued eyes were wide as she twisted in the saddle to look upon the dark-furred stranger as Eira rolled forward a few steps, turning of her own accord and giving a sharp snort of displeasure at being startled herself. Myrika held the reins with ease and kept the mare still, as well as retaining her own seat in the saddle. A strange red slash nearly covered his eye, and the russet-hued woman thought she saw hardness in his heart. He would not need to gasconade of his prowess, either: though his size was not so impressive to her, big as she was, he held himself with seemingly unfaltering confidence.

No, she answered quickly, patting Eira on the shoulders in an effort to calm the horse. I... didn't know anyone lived up this way, honestly, she said, her explanation continuing and quickly growing rambling, thanks to her nervousness. I used to live up here, in a shack a ways south, and back then, there weren't many Luperci at all in the area. This was true -- most were passer-by, heading to or from the packlands to the south. All had been avoided by Myri. In the rare instance someone rattled on her door, the hybrid hadn't answered -- most times, she'd been prudent enough to leave home before they even showed up. Thamur had been the only one to surprise her.

In her surprise and anxiety, the rust-hued woman had not though to apologize or offer to leave, though she had already agreed to the latter in her own mind. Perhaps her failure to share this decision would cause her ill luck here with the stranger, but Myrika was willing to attempt amends, in any case; she waited in nervousness, ears half-mast and tail pressed against her leg and Eira's side. The russet coyote was not sure whether she should introduce herself or just go -- she thought either might be rude without more from the dark stranger, and so she decided her best course was to await his response.

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