Ni'Srilan: The Desert: how very emo of you!

The thorns he spares when the rose is taken;
The rocks are left when he wastes the plain;
The wind that wanders, the weeds wind-shaken,
These remain.

The water feels cool under his feet; that is the first thing he thinks when they reach the oasis and, unceremoniously, he bends to drink, two hooves planted at the slippery, muddy edge.

His limbs are long; a testament of his age (or lack thereof).

Because he was born here, and has never seen the Outside, he isn’t surprised when something new and precious cracks through his body and leaps at the water, rippling it like an unfelt wind. It’s the fire, reacting to its age-old nemesis, the fire he never wears except as a thick, choking mantle of heat. It’s also electricity, generating somewhere near his navel, pooling at his hooves and dying harmlessly in the sand.

“Voila,” he says simply, throwing his head back and down in a way reminiscent of an exaggerated bow. “Water.”

Unbidden, he remembers his father(s) talking about days in the shade, playing with his brothers and sisters (many of which were not even related to him at all) and talking about anything.

He’d never seen those days; he was not alive then. But he heard of them often enough.

“New, aren’t you,” he not-asks, something of normalcy returning when blood starts circulating more freely through his limbs and the water – which he’d steadfastly ignored – soothes his throat and mouth from chafing. Shaking the dirt from his body, he feels more like himself – awkward, check, snarky, check, young, why yes, check. Pain, of course, check, but he’ll get over it. It’s not like he even has a choice.

Self-pity, he has learned, is best taken in minute doses, lest one drowns in it.

Being born in a desert, Alerion is reasonably against drowning of any kind.

“Make sure you don’t forget,” he comments unnecessarily, “because otherwise…”

Well. He has seen enough carcasses in the desert to know ‘otherwise’.

Ah, the joys of small talk. His nose wrinkles just a bit and he watches.

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of eros and of dust