Welcome to Gaia! ::

Falarnon stood, staring down at the hat with a thoughtful expression. It was a nice hat, made of leather fine leather, wrapped with a leathern belt, buckled with a silver buckle and sporting a pristine white plume. It was the sort of hat made by a human craftsman, the sort of hat that a man would wear with pride. No, there was nothing to object to, with regard to the hat itself.

But there was so much more to it than the hat itself. He'd had this hat since his father had first placed it on his head as a youth, the same day Aramis had placed a similar hat on the head of his twin brother, Vencel. Both boys had been in awe, and hadn't needed their father to stress the value of the gifts. These hats, and the silver cross necklaces that accompanied them, had been Aramis' most prized possessions, relics of his past life as a French war horse. It had been an impressive moment.

Yet in the years that had passed since, Falarnon had found himself making much more of the hat than he really ought. It had shifted from being an object of pride to one of awkwardness as he'd grown and felt what had been deep admiration for his father shifting into something more nebulous. He'd thought they had the perfect family when he was a foal, but he'd eventually realized that his father was not happy in their life, and that he even now yearned for something beyond the life of a family man.

Needless to say, this left Falarnon with a few...conflicted sentiments.

Aramis had done his best to fix things with his youngest, though he didn't truly understand the reason for Falarnon's aloofness. For Falarnon had always kept his own counsel in this matter, troubled by the fact that the life he'd once loved was apparently built on a facade.

He sighed, looking at the hat once more before squaring his shoulders. To the hat, he gave a brief bow, then turned and walked away.

It had never occurred to Falarnon that he might have been watched during his little hat interaction, so focused had he been on his own thoughts and wound up as he was in his own emotions. He’d never been a hunter, or a field Soquili, so he’d never learned the art of constant awareness that served so many Soquili in good stead. Perhaps that was one of the reasons he was still regarded by many in his family as a child; if not a child, at least as someone who needed looking after. It was one of his bad habits; he tended to turn his focus inward, getting caught up in whatever was on his mind at the expense of watching where he was going.

He was better than he used to be, though; it had been ages since he’d run into a tree.

So he was in blissful ignorance as he wandered off, never once considering that someone might have been watching him, someone who didn’t know him, his hat, or his motivations, and might even now be trying to make sense of what they’d seen…or just trying to make off with the hat. Not that he cared much about the hat; hadn’t he just abandoned it in a highly symbolic way? The hat was representative; it represented Aramis’ ideal vision of his son. Well, Falarnon would never be that ideal, and it was best for everyone involved if he just gave up all pretenses of trying.
He just had to figure out what he was actually going to be. That was the tricky part, defining himself when what he’d always done before was define what he wasn’t.

Either way, the hat was old news, and he walked on without so much as a backwards glance. He needed to figure out some things, and obviously it was not a good idea to try and sort them out so close to home. The last thing he needed was to run into his father and have to have a conversation about his hat, or lack thereof.

In spite of himself, Falarnon sighed. Perhaps it would have been best to just give the hat back to Aramis. If there was going to be a row, at least that way they’d get it over and done with…