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 Posted: Sat May 06, 2017 5:51 pm
 Late spring shadows were cast, long and dark and still chilly, among the dark and twisted woodland that sunset. These woods never got that warm or bright. Or attractive. But Haruto never had any expectations of the woods of the Shadow Herd. From what little could be gleaned about his mother's family, she lived in an equally joyless setting. So there probably wasn't any chance of growing up anywhere even remotely normal, though, perhaps, if he'd had his missing half sister Rafaella's luck, then he might've. If he didn't die first.
And Haruto privately wasn't sure if, despite his frailty, he actually could die.
Probably not the best thing to experiment with.
Hmmm. Rafaella. His elder half sister. Nobody talked about her. It was always kinda funny. Haruto had initially thought no one talked about her, on account of some kind of quiet grief, coupled with a quiet anger at Plamen for losing the filly, and then shacking up with Haruto's mother. The longer things went on, however, the more Haruto suspected that that wasn't really the case. It seemed eminently more probable that no one really cared about Rafaella. If Haruto had much resembling emotions, he might feel sorry for his missing half sister, but life in the Shadow had worn off any softness in his nature.
Not that Haruto actually liked the Shadow. A herd of mild psychopathy, ego, unpleasant tricks and schemes, and particularly nasty warhawks, not to mention raw ambition. Haruto, he didn't have ambition. Not all tricks had to hurt someone else, ego and war weren't everything, and he wasn't a psychopath. If anything, Haruto just wanted to be left alone most of the time.
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Posted: Sat May 06, 2017 5:58 pm
The sun slowly passed below the horizon. The shadows melted together, and the light seemed to almost completely disappear, swallowed quickly into a deep, brooding twilight.
Come to think of it, there was no point, really, now was there? Haruto didn't belong, no one paid him any attention. Had it been like this with Rafaella, too? Though Haruto was pretty sure that it would take the rest of the Shadow several months to notice that he was gone. Even if they noticed quickly, they regularly forgot about him for weeks at a time.
He got to his mismatched hooves, eerie and somewhat ghostly in the gloom, swishing his long, silky tail. Why he hadn't considered it seriously before, he could not say.
He didn't like the Shadow all that much, and the rest of the herd forgot he was even there, anyway? Fine. While most herd members' absence would cause a hunt to end them in short order, Haruto was different. He could slip out unnoticed.
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Posted: Sat May 06, 2017 6:11 pm
Haruto had had nothing to pack, though his quiet passage through the woods was slow and labored. He'd never been an athlete, and had always been too frail for his own good. But at least he didn't have to carry much of his life with him.
It took him a two days to reach the edge of the woods, in a spot he was reasonably sure no patrol would reach until the next day. Night had fallen,
and the moon was beginning to rise.
Haruto stared at the moon. It was the first time he'd had an unimpeded view of it that he could remember. His dark red-brown eyes filled with the sight, and the moonlight seemed to linger on the pale, misty markings on his body, lending them an ethereal glow. Haruto laid his ears back nervously, embarrassed by the moon's attention on him.
But he had made up his mind. He was leaving, to see the world. And no one in the Shadow would really miss him. Maybe he might find family who would care about him, without showering him in attention. Yeah. And maybe the corpses of the rabbits his younger half sister Hyperopia gleefully murdered would evolve wings and fly.
Haruto twitched his tail a few times.
It had to be worth it. Anything had to be better than the passive boredom and unpleasantness he'd always known so far.
Haruto picked up his mismatched hooves, and pushed himself into as quick a gallop as he could go, darting from shadow to shadow, pushing himself over unfamiliar hills, into a world that suddenly seemed alive with possibilities.
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