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"And coming up from the left-hand side with extreme cunning and craftiness, Corsant takes the leads for a surprising victory, pulled out at the last moment with superior speed and true grit!"

Crowing victoriously, Corsant skittered to a stop, his smooth hooves digging into the turf as he attempted to both halt and turn at the same time without falling on his face. A wide grin of excitement and pleasure covered his face, his beaming teeth bright against his dark hide even when his hoof caught and he fell over sideways. He was still a foal, after all, and foals never stayed down long.

"Wasn't I awesome, Dad? Did you see how fast I was at the part where I came 'round the tree with my wings back like this and I cut you off right before the finish line like WOW! E'cept you DIDN'T see at all because I was right out of your sight and you thought no WAY could I be passing you, especially with the end of the line RIGHT THERE, right? Right right right?"

His son's enthusiasm was infectious, and Antony couldn't hide his grin even if he wanted to. Laughing, he watched as his son pulled himself to his feet, shook off his grassy wings and blew his tangled blond mane out of his face with a loud 'WHUFF' before stepping forward to pat the colt on the head. "You are correct, Cor; I was completely taken unawares by your amazing speed and maneuvering. At this rate, you might even overtake your older sister when it comes to sheer speed!"

If Antony's expression was a bit too serious as he spoke and his eyes a bit too sparkly, it was completely lost on Corsant, who only returned his father's grin. The praise, coming on top of his victory, was a heady brew, and crowing his excitement he began to run in circles around his father, his piping voice calling out "I beat you, I beat you, I beat yoooooooooou!" until the forest itself probably rang with Corsant's joy.

And Antony wasn't about to cut that short. "Yes you did, Cor; you are a speedy boy and if you practice, you will become even faster! But now, I need to go and see what your mother and brother are up to, so I'm going to head back. Are you going to stay out here a bit longer, or would you like to come back with me? I believe that your mother said something about baths this afternoon..."

Stopping again, Corsant shook his head most decidedly in refusing that idea. Not that he had much against baths, they were just so SILLY to be doing all the time! And Mama was rather set in her belief that foals needed to be bathed when they weren't even dirty, which Corsant found to be rather pointless and a waste of time when he was only going to get dirty again right away...no thanks. "Nope, I wanna stay out here and play some more today. I betcha that I'll be even FASTER when I get home, especially if'n I practice today!"

"Well, alright then. Stay on this side of the river, and be back home in time for supper. If you're at all late..." Trailing off, Antony left the dire consequences for lateness unspoken, knowing well that the imagination of a child could fill in the blank with something much more dire than anything their parents might vocalize. And given Corsant's round-eyed stare, that imagination was working at full capability. "Alright then. Have fun, play nice, and I'll see you at suppertime." Giving Corsant's mane an affectionate ruffle, Antony turned and, with a running leap, took off into the air, heading back to the bend in the river that they called home.

His head tilted upwards, Corsant watched until Antony was out of sight, letting out a gusty sigh. His dad was so cool, and he was so SMART! And fast...and he could fly. Cor wished he could fly, but his parents said that his wings still weren't developed enough to learn how. It sucked, he, Azelle, and Lanzo all agreed, but there was nothing that could be done about it until they were bigger.

Craning his neck around, Cor eyed his own wings thoughtfully. They were nice wings, dark red like the rest of him and studded with miniature versions of his parents' shoulder spikes. They LOOKED like they should be able to fly...

"But they don't, so OH WELL." Announcing this fact to no one in particular, Corsant stamped his feet and rustled the inactive wings with all the self-importance one small foal could muster. His feet worked just fine, and he was FAST on them, so he would just keep training them for now and then let his wings catch up when they were ready to work. Whenever that was.

But today, he had the WHOLE rest of the morning AND afternoon to play whatever he wanted, so he just wasn't going to worry about it.

"BANZAI!!!!" With that, he was charging off in no particular direction, just ready and willing to enjoy his time.

Considering that the backwards angling of his horns meant he'd have to be running backwards in order for them to catch on something, it was safe to say that the filly would be disappointed. However, just because he was safe from one fiasco didn't mean he was safe from them all, especially when he didn't feel like watching where he was going.

"Corsant ducks to the left, he dives, he swerves, he-OOF"

Personal narration was cut short as Corsant (too late) noticed the low branches of the nearby tree, attempted to swerve, and ended up clothes-lining himself on another branch. With a great crunching of branches and squawking of colt, he tumbled into the branches of a shrub as the very picture of wrack and ruin.

Luckily for all involved (except for maybe the shrub), the indefatigable spirit of youth was hard to keep down. After mere moments of lying there trying to get his breath back, Corsant bounced to his feet covered in twigs, his eyes huge as he surveyed the scene. All around him were splintered bits of shrubbery, the winter-weakened branches having been too brittle to survive the sudden and ferocious onslaught of high-speed foal.A deep gouge in the soft turf marked where he had caught his foot right before falling, and bits of bark littered the ground beneath the branch the had started the whole thing. If Corsant were to look at himself, he would see that he was liberally decorated with twigs, and an ache in his front legs where he'd hit the branch was already starting to set in.

However, Corsant at least had his priorities in order. His face breaking into a wide grin, he crowed triumphantly, "That was AWESOME!"

Highly charged with adrenaline as he was, it would have taken a lot more than a mere collision with a tree branch to get Corsant to calm down or admit defeat (translation: go home to cry about his wounds and be coddled by his parents). That same adrenaline made him resemble an over-sized hummingbird, twitching and trembling with excitement as he turned from the ruin of the shrubs to blink at the appearance of the other foal. Her concern didn't click, but her words couldn't be mistaken and he responded by rapidly shaking his head.

"Nope, nothurt,notREALLYhurt-well,mylegshurtsome,butthatwasaHUGEbranchandIhititgoingSOOOOOOOOfastthatIwasalllikeWHOA!" Speaking so fast that his words all ran together in one jumbled sentence, Corsant explained the actual course of the action with all the excitement of someone reliving a cherished memory...not a crash. However, his excitement and pleasure in what had happened was obvious; and why wouldn't he be proud to have pulled off such a cool trick? That should REALLY have hurt but it didn't, not really!

Shaking off some of the twigs, he bounded up towards the filly, delighted to have someone else to share the moment with. A naturally outgoing child, the fact that she was a stranger and might maybe be mean didn't even register as he scampered up the hillock, picking up his story with enthusiasm. "And I flipped all the way over and landed, but I'm not at ALL hurt except for my legs and if I keep practicing I'll be able to be going SUPER fast and jump over branches like and maybe even do cool flip jumps!" Pausing, he pushed back his unruly blond mane with a grin as he grinned at the filly, secure in his belief that she could only agree that it had been a remarkable happening. "But next time, I shouldn't fall, don'cha think?"

The filly's blank stare and speechlessness went past Corsant without even registering on his radar, wound up as he was in his own enthusiasm and the joy of sharing his exciting story with an audience. All that mattered to him at the moment was that she was listening (listening, in the sense that she hadn't turned and fled from him, talked over him, or otherwise retreated). And if her looked of stunned amazement (his interpretation of her fallen jaw) was any indication, she was suitably impressed by his exploits.

The fact that he had simply confounded her would not have even measured. Being a member of the family that was his, both his energy and his size were par for the course. Sure, he was bigger than his SISTER, but boys were just supposed to be bigger'n girls. Papa was bigger'n Mama, and that was just the way it was. To be sure, Azelle must have been bigger than this new filly, but he himself was bigger than Lanzo, so it stood to reason that Soquili came in all sorts of different sizes. His untidiness was also nothing extraordinary; his mother was used to his messy habits, and he knew that he was destined to a bath at the end of the day anyway so why NOT get dirty?

But he had to pay attention when the filly finally spoke, commenting on his injury and sounding all mother-ish without making even a little comment about his exciting tumble. Having not expected that angle of conversation, he was every bit as stunned as she had been at his first appearance. Golden eyes wide, it was his turn to stare in bewilderment, first at the filly, then at his legs. Unsurprisingly, they looked the same to him as they always did, any bruising hidden by his dark red coat. However, the distraction allowed her a moment of silence and his vocal chords a brief rest.

A VERY brief rest.

"Well, they don't really hurt, not like the kinda hurt that makes your whole face squinch up and you just want to take a nap. B'sides, if I stopped moving every time I banged myself up, I'd NEVER get to move again!" Looking up from his legs, Corsant gave the filly a huge grin, the speechless moment gone as quickly as it had arrived. "S'all good, so you don't have to worry!"

Having set her mind at ease on the matter of his safety, he finally realized what he'd forgotten to do; his grandfathers would be so ashamed! Brushing back his forelock again (the aggravating thing was always falling in his face...), he gave her an overly-careful bow and said, "Oh, and I'm Corsant, but you can call me Cor cause it's shorter...and wow, you have no wings at ALL!"

A belated observation, but a fascinating one all the same. She might have been able to recognize he was a kalona from his looks, but the concept of a regular wingless Soquili was a new one for him. How odd! Cocking his head to the side, he stared at the filly with unabashed interest, finally querying with absolute seriousness, "Can you still fly without wings?"

Ok, so maybe it was a stupid question. But considering that flight was practically a rite of passage for Corsant and he had never previously seen a Soquili without wings, his question was completely natural. If Soquilis were meant to fly, then even wingless Soquilis should hypothetically be able to learn! It would be harder for them, no doubt, and they wouldn't be able to float like leaves or glide, but maybe they had other ways they could fly...like maybe hidden wings that folded up super tight like a beetle's!

At the obvious indignity of her expression and retort, Corsant's ears flattened and his expression turned to one of somewhat embarrassed chagrin. Ok, so maybe she COULDN'T fly, and maybe she didn't have folding beetle wings (bummer, though; folding beetle wings would be AWESOME!); logically that made sense, but it was so sad! The fact that she could never experience the flight that he so looked forward to made him sad on her behalf, far more sad than he could possibly be embarrassed by his mistake.

And that embarrassment was quick to pass, his ears righting themselves and his expression returning to normal. His mistake had been rational, and he wasn't supposed to feel bad about mistakes that made SENSE! Or so he had taken his parents' wisdom, and so far it was a strategy that worked for him. "Well, that's too bad, but I guess you must be really super good at running then, without any wings to slow you down. And you never have to worry about things like your mane getting caught in your shoulder spikes, or tripping on your wings when you're standing up, or anything like that. I wouldn't be sad if mine could be taken off and put on again, that would be SOOOOO helpful!"

Awkward commiseration at best, but the sentiment was honest and the words uttered without any condescension or pity. Sure, it was terrible in a lot of ways that she didn't have wings, but it also had nice points (he being a bit of a klutz, removable wings would have been a godsend!). And it probably wasn't her fault she didn't have wings; at the close distance, he could see no scars that would the obvious results of traumatic wing removal, so she must just not have had any, EVER!

Weird.

"So, do your brothers and sisters and parents and grandparents have no wings, too, Mari? My brothers and sisters and parents have wings JUST like mine, and so do some of my aunts and uncles and my one grandpa, but my OTHER grandpa, he has wings covered in feathers like a bird! They are very soft and fluffy, but the poky parts of the feathers can scratch."

It was difficult to say what Corsant would have thought if he'd known that he'd been judged tactless. Tender as his years were, he'd already started to learn that he was a bit "slow" when it came to saying the right thing at the right time; unlike his brother and sister of the same age, he was the one who made their mother pause and eye him for a moment, his father sigh, their older siblings laugh. No one ever really made any comments about it (and no one had ever hit him for it), but he was a sharp enugh child to figure out that there was something in what he was saying that was not translating well.

Ah well, he had plenty of time to overcome any little communication hiccups as he aged. Adults automatically knew how to say things and not get funny looks, he just had to wait until he got older!

But at the moment, he was able to prattle on in blissful ignorance, the filly's silence the perfect foil to his chattiness. And regardless of what others might have thought, he found nothing at all upsetting her quieting down again after her brief commentary on her family's wing(less) state. Really, it was very nice of her to be so considerate of the fact that he had a LOT to talk about!

"Huh, so your family is kinda like my family, 'cept instead of having feather wings and leather wings you have wings and NO wings! Isn't it kinda funny how different we can all be, even in just our families? Cause you'd think that families would have a lot more commonalities, but it's like...we're NOT! I mean, my hair is the same color as my mom's and HER dad, but she's all black, all over otherwise; and my dad is white. Well, mostly white, he also has some red marks. But he's not red like me at ALL, and neither's my brothers and sisters. I'm NEEQ (translation: unique), and I guess that it makes sense we're all neeq from each other, huh?"

Having reached this extreme point of enlightenment, Corsant broke of into silence himself, beaming at Mariasha with obvious delight. And why wouldn't he be delighted, now that he'd met someone new and different AND realized that he was more enlightened than he would have thought? It was TOTALLY cool!

And time to change the subject, because otherwise he was just going to get tired. "Do you like running, Mari?"

At Mariasha's giggle, Corsant's broad grin got even broader; it was always nice to see other people laugh, and she hadn't really laughed or smiled even once since they'd started talking, not REALLY. Not to say that she had to smile all the time, 'cause sometimes things were just sad, or boring, or hurt, or you were just in a bad mood or trying to prove that you didn't laugh all the time and could actually be just a serious person. HOWEVER, she shouldn't have any reason to be angry or sad or any of that stuff, and hopefully she wasn't hurt, and why would she need to prove that she was serious to him when he was a stranger?

Either way, it was nice to see her smile. Smiles and laughs made everyone around happier, not that he needed to be happier than he was but still.

"Swirls? Swirls are really, really cool! No one in my family has swirls at all, and they're all sorts of different colors. Well, maybe not all SORTS; mostly black and white and red and like...mixes of black and white and red-OH, there's also purple, and grey, and I guess a bit of blonde like my mane. And we don't have swirls, but some of us have markings like if you pawed at the ground and made weird jaggedy shapes like this." Demonstrating with a hoof in the turf, he did his best to replicate the runic markings that decorated his father's body. True, one would need to use their imagination, but he considered it to be a good replica.

His short attention span in full swing, he was able to shift his thoughts back from the dirt to running at her comment, even though her answer was a bummer. Looks like they wouldn't be able to race at all, that stunk! She was littler than him, yeah, but littler things could be more manuverable and faster in some ways; he bet she'd be REALLY good at dodging tree branches and things! But maybe she was so little she got tired too fast, or her feet hurt a lot or something. Bummer.

"Well, that's too bad. I'm getting better at running, but I still need a LOT of practice. I beat my dad today though, and he's REALLY big and really fast!" His grin shifted into a more serious expression at that, and he leaned close to her to say in a very serious and confidential tone, "I think he might have been cheating a bit, though, 'cause even though I'm fast I'm still not THAT fast, you know?" But drawing back, he gave an excited little hop, declaring, "But just you wait, by the time I'm really big I will be SOOOOOOO fast, fast on my feet AND fast on my wings!" With much effort, he unfurled his wings at that, striking what he felt to be a suitably impressive pose and holding it for all of five seconds before his undeveloped wing muscles protested and he dropped them.

Wiggling his shoulders as he folded his wings back up, he enquired, "So what do YOU like to do when you're able to do anything you want?" Hopefully it was something new and different; Soquilis that had no wings and matched and had swirls had to have something new and interesting that they liked to to, and he was game to try it!

Corsant was definitely an exuberant child; he lived life with his speed switch constantly switched on 'hi', and everything he did seemed to be spiced up with extra adrenaline. This meant that when he fell, his lows could be lower; but it also meant that his highs were higher, and even the mundanities of life were positively delightful a good portion of the time. Life was simple and uncomplicated, full of adventure and excitement and joy.

And that was something that his parents cherished, the knowledge that their child was able to enjoy himself so much. Antony would never wish to broach serious or worrisome topics with his children while they were young, but being a half-blood himself and knowing the dangers his children faced as mixed bloods, he and Loveless had explained to their kids as soon as they were old enough to be on their own for any amount of time that they needed to be careful. Having to explain such things to small foals was a hateful thing to Tony, but he and Loveless had agreed that it was better to arm their foals with knowledge, rather than assuming that they themselves would always be around to protect them.

Though if Tony had his way, he would.

Still, it had been a worrisome time, waiting to see how the kids would react to their newly imparted knowledge, and it was delightful to see positivity persevere. Such was Corsant's way, and it was doubtful that even a life-threatening face-off would do much to permanently dampen his mood.

So he was in great enthusiastic form right now, his natural good spirits feeding off of what appeared to be increasing good spirits on the part of his companion. And she was smart, she and her good ideas! Well, except for the idea of catching his father cheating! Papa was too smart for that, definitely, and he was going to clarify that for her when her shocked comment about him hunting distracted him.

"What, me? Naw, do I really look like someone who hunts?" As he spoke, Corsant grinned his widest, showing off his flat, even teeth. Though he sported kalona wings and horns, his teeth, like his hooves and tail, were definitely throwbacks to his wind grandfather; his dietary tract fortunately having followed his teeth, he was purely an herbivore. "Don't hunt, don't eat meat. Neither does my papa, neither do some of my brothers and sisters; I just want to be fast just because. Being fast can be fun, and it can be 'portant, too, 'specially when I'm little and can't fly. There are some really dangerous things out there, and it's best to stay away or get away for now. But I'm going to get big and tough and then I won't have to run!"

As he spoke, he puffed his chest out to make himself big and imposing; or at least as big and imposing as it was possible for a half-grown foal to look. His expression once again borderline serious, he asked, "Have you ever seen a bad Soquili?"