A Colt's Reins, Chapter 1/? (revised)

[Tomorrow]

AN: Once again, I'd like to send out a HUGE, HUGE thanks to Andrea, my beta. She does such a great job. ^_^ Also, I must thank Zapenstap, because, like I said, without her, I wouldn't have been inspired to write this.

Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing, and I'm not making any money off of this.

Rating (for now): PG-13 (for some talk about the birds and the bees and a little cussing).



Chapter 1: Paradise



"The Lipizzaner danced amidst the rain, let the cool water travel down his neck and mingle with the morning breeze. The lake waltzed around his hooves, twirled at his calves as he bucked - a kilt of splashes and blustering sheets.

"But the maiden hidden behind the drapes of the willow tree only saw a man. Saw the expressive, brown eyes of a man."

Pesky chestnut fly-aways were brushed from in front of cerulean eyes, which squinted while rereading the last sentence on the page. As such, the expression was harsh, with the skin around his nose scrunched and incisors nibbling just below his bottom lip, as though the grinding of that tender flesh were meant to bully his mind into releasing the most appropriate diction for that excerpt to the custody of his pencil - a more perceptible form of persuasion. With a shake of his head, he flipped over the utensil and erased a word, wiping the rubbings off his notebook with his knuckles.

"Saw the expressive, brown eyes of a human."

Satisfied with his alteration, the boy smiled and took a moment to lift his gaze from the notebook, letting his eyes roam over the pastureland spread out below him. From his perch on the branches of a genteel and corpulent maple, thick with a robe of rugged, quilted bark and jeweled knots laced by emerald leaves and sparkling from viscous ruffles of sap, he spied the bay colored rump of an Arabian colt in the distance. Its probing teeth closed over a stretch of wire on the fence, as the beast's fresh surge in hormones and solidifying girth made it skittish, nearly restless for a challenge. Trotting near the lower ridges, the thick, protuberant muscles of a Budenny's neck rippled, brought out the golden luster in its pelt while it turned and exposed that skin to the sunlight. The broad forehead of the Irish Draught nuzzled tulips by an old, split fence post, crushing their rimmed petals beneath its cumbersome and clumsy hooves.

White manes whipped in the wind. Sloped chestnut shoulders and black hocks pivoted from gallops over the hillside. Even deep-liver breasts skimmed the tips of the tall grass.

Foals stood beneath their mothers, hid their snouts between the mares' knobby legs, flipping their stubs of a tail shyly. Fillies walked alongside their colts, scraping their hooves along the dirt in a primitive form of nervousness and basking in their companions' shadows; while stallions and their respective mares watched each other from a distance with eyes bleached out by the sun - reminiscing, perhaps, of couplings long since forgotten, of the days before they were slaves to siring and gestation.

When they could just run.

"He stared back at the female with a sense of longing, realizing the common burning in both of their breasts. Although she was human now and he a willing stallion, he had been a man once before? a brave one. One that sacrificed himself for his lover, when their house was in flames and the smoke kissed her lips to suck the breath away. And so?"

"Tavi!"

The little boy jumped at the gruff call of his name, startled enough to drop his pencil. "Aw, great."

"Tavi! Where are you?"

Leaning over on the bough, scraping his shins along its jagged crust, he peered below him, eyes narrowing as they circled the tree's base - though the labyrinth of twisted limbs and reticular, winding halls of foliage and twigs thwarted any clear view of the ground.

The intensifying crunch of the man's footsteps on the grass seeped into his ears, made his shoulders stiffen when he saw the interloper's shadow slink over the hill. Like a serpent waning in the dense, black smoke hood of a bonfire it stretched across the blades, was swallowed by the shade of the maple's own tattered canopy of wood and lush, crumpled sheets.

"Tavi Yulian! Answer me! Now!" Platinum tresses slapped against the figure's face as he ran, scouring the fields for his charge.

Nephew?

His eyes darted over to the stream, flittered around the boundaries of the fence, dilapidated and with worms tugging their slick, slovenly bellies through paved hovels, even sought the craggy base of the ravine, littered with spotted stones and used as a stage by pirouetting silver dust-devils. Walking only a few moments earlier, he was in a dead sprint by then - adrenaline pumping through the muscles of his legs, causing them to bulge and squeeze in a primal cadence; breath echoing through his head in bass grunts; perspiration lapping at his temples. His calls were becoming raspy, choked by a tickling waver that teased his throat, while that same apprehension pulverized his stomach with each new second that passed - as though tiny fists were boxing with the lining. The contours of his calf-muscles strained against his pants as he ran, and the stench of sweat radiated from his skin - pungent and damp as a wild pony's mane after trampling through a marsh.

That's not one of our Fresians; I only breed black ones?

The tip of his boot connected with a rock and he pitched forward. Although he regained his footing mid-stumble, thrusting his arms out to seize the air and pull his chest up - not even breaking his rhythm.

It has red reins? we only use brown?

Hearing a guttural snarl, he hurled his body to the right. Hooves cloaked in bushels of white fur careened with the space near his left ear as a Clydesdale jutted out its ribs and jabbed its vein-wrenched legs at the man provokingly - chastising him for the narrowly missed collision.

"Tavi, please!" He couldn't hide the tremble in his call that time, the lines that etched his face.

Where?

"Tavi!"

"Here I am, Rucia."

Sky blue eyes widened when the man turned around to find his charge standing under the shade of the maple tree, his notebook lying next to the forgotten pencil on the ground. And the child stared back at him with confusion lingering in his gaze, the color of his irises all too vivid, while his hands fingered the collar of his sweater. He was so tiny, so scrawny with his skin stretched like a leotard over tendons, immature muscles, and bone; especially when standing in front of the hefty trunk that towered behind him, with its dunlap of nests and knots and the lower, drooping leaves that were portly enough to smother his heart-shaped face - making it too obvious that any of the horses, even some of the newborns, could dwarf him as well.

Raising his arm, the taller approached Tavi with an almost robotic stiffness in his step - his gait was so rickety; knees shaking. His torso was unnaturally cramped, distinguishing the sharp curves of his breastbone beneath the taut skin. His spine was locked in a sturdy, rigid column. He reached his arm out and placed his hand on the boy's cheek, tracing around those expectant blue eyes, nails skimming over his cheekbones. Just looking at him. Just? feeling him. That he was there.

A hoarse sigh slipped through the man's lips.

"What happened, Brother? What?s wrong?"

Rucia leaned back against the tree trunk, rested his head on one of the larger knots as his breathing evened out again. His eyes fell closed. "Nothing, Tavi. I just thought I saw something. Don?t worry about it."

"Oh." It was barely a whisper.

In that moment of silence, their muscles visibly loosened; shoulders sagged and jaws unclenched, unwinding the rope of tension that seemed to have wrapped around them, unnoticed.

"Tell me a story, Rucia."

"Go get a novel out of the library if you want to fill your head with bullshit," the older responded, deadpan, as he reached up and began plucking stray, tethered straws of hay that managed to squirm their way into his strands. Their former neutrality broke under the severity of his tone, similar to the way the jeer of the wind on a blustery summer's day sweeps away and throttles dandelion seeds. "I have things to do."

"But I've already read all those books, Rucia - I practically know them by heart."

"Tough, Kid." He bent down and picked up the pliers he dropped earlier that day, while he'd been mending a snag in the wire-linked fence near the mountain pass. Brushing the tool against his pants, disseminating saffron breaths of pollen through the breeze, he sheathed it in his belt. "Pick up your math text and solve some word problems if you have nothing better to do than write your fantasy crap. You seemed too distracted this morning to concentrate on anything else but that damn Cream filly that was strutting outside the window."

"She's gonna be ready to mate soon." Mahogany tufts of hair whispered against his cheekbones as he watched the yellow dust from the pliers twinkle while floating down unto the grass, sprinkling the blades with a tawny, fragrant snow. "That's all. I know she'll breed some fine ones - you can see it in her canter." His eyes wandered from that microcosm winter out into the waning fields, where a few of the mares sauntered in the fading, unraveling afghan of sunlight and cumulus that swaddled the summits of the Carpathians - a brilliant coverlet of cobalt, violet, amber, and sable yarn, becoming worn, even frayed as the jagged peaks ripped out each stitch.

Only a few feet away from a roan-hipped Appaloosa foal stood the draft horse. Her back curved into a lissome arch as she reared, with her whinnying echoing through the mountains' cavernous jowls and off their fragile, translucent rows of stalagmite teeth. The sun's iridescent beams varnished her pink coat and milk-white mane that whipped in the gale, which brightened the moist, cloudy amber in her eyes. "She holds her head up high, lifts her legs so gracefully off the ground, like she's a princess. The curve of her back is even just right. Sure - she may be a little too sleek and kinda skittish for top dollar in town, but she's still the prettiest horse on the ranch. No doubt about it." His lips folded into a soft smile, and he turned to face his brother. "I wanna make sure she's taken care of, so she's in her prime when the next estrus period comes around."

"The horses can pretty much take care of themselves, Tavi. They've been breeding for thousands of years on their own out in nature, without our help. You don?t have to coddle them."

"But you said that beyond this land? nature really doesn't exist anymore - that it hasn't for years. You said after the Indemnity Federation destroyed all the Colonies, it began its takeover of the Earth Sphere. And now?" his throat clamped shut, eyes dilated, when he noticed a ram trying to pry its curled horns from the fence, shearing its sallow, ragged pelt with every neck writhe and butt of its skull. Each wrench coerced a scratchy bray from the animal's saliva and grass-smeared muzzle, shifted the surveying pupil of a hawk that circled over the stream. Tavi's heart stalled, listless. It skipped a beat, so as to throb in time with the bird's wings. "?everything's dead and gone, and the animals seem so lost with their homes destroyed. You? they? they don?t know how to live anymore. They need us to show them what to do." The predator's eyes caught the dull sheen of scales from the fish frolicking in the river bend just ahead. Screaming at this more appetizing discovery, it braced its wings for the dive and ravaged the surface of the water with bared, gleaming talons. Although, a soggy slap from a tail fin and sodden feathers were all it procured from the assault.

Tavi shut his eyes. "What if our horses start to forget how it works, too? Maybe they need us to help them out, just like a little reminder. In case--"

"They're still immersed in their natural environment here. Believe me: they haven't forgotten about sex."

The child grimaced at the bluntness that cut through his brother's response. "And that's why you have to have a sugar cube with you whenever you want them to do something, and all I have to do is make eye contact; and then they'll do whatever I say."

Rucia halted his current task of hay-binding, eyebrow slightly arched, to peer at the boy. "I'm not following."

"Take the American Cream we were talking about earlier." Tavi lifted his hand and pointed to the filly that meandered, ivory tail swaying lazily, towards the sparse rink of daffodils by the stream. "Her name's Relena."

Rucia's eyes darkened. His bale dropped to the grass, the rope around the sheaf snapping and scattering a dry nest of straw and dirt around his feet - the same dryness that swabbed the roof of his mouth. "Tavi?"

"She might be more affectionate with you if you at least treated her like a lady and called her by her name when you wanted something from her."

"Tavi?" He hesitated, dropping his azure gaze to his boots. A few dingy wisps of wheat-colored hair came loose from his sloppy, sweaty ponytail and fell into his eyes. They stuck to his lips, chapped from constant licking during his chores that morning. "You know these horses are bred to be sold."

The twelve-year-old gulped uneasily and smoothed a lock of hazel behind his ear. He glanced at his brother out of the corners of his eyes. "I know."

"You shouldn?t get so attached to them. Giving them names only makes the separation more painful." Ice blue eyes glinted for a brief moment, when a smirk began its steady nudge at his lips. "Remember the last time I had a transaction in town - that fit you threw?"

"That's because you took Heero with you," Tavi huffed, almost sassy in his reply, while a twinge of pink threatened his cheeks. He sprang to his feet, stumbling forward from the rush, when his mouth sagged into a quivering pout. His lower lip was fat, tremulous. "He's a mountain zebra."

"And a client in town was going to let me name my price on his head. It's none of my concern if he doesn?t know the first thing about an animal's trainability. It?s his responsibility to know how wild those zebras can be." Rucia chuckled lightly. "Buyer beware."

"But you hurt Relena's feelings when you took him away. They were in love."

"Horses don't love, Tavi. They go in heat." The man straightened to his full height and clutched the child's shoulder. Delicate wool from the sweater bunched between his fingers as his grip started to tremble, weaving a disheveled quilt of flesh and fleece. "You know those are two entirely different things."

"You?re wrong." Shrugging his brother's hand away, Tavi's tone was sharp, insistent. He stepped back, shifting the bulk of his weight onto the balls of his feet. "He always protected her from the other colts, even if she wasn't mature enough to mate with him herself. He even watched her through the freezing rain, after we started keeping her in the stables more often for the storm season. He just stood out in the fields, waiting for her, making sure she was dry and safe. She wandered over to his grazing patch everyday. Horses only go 'in heat' for a few weeks, Rucia. It wasn't that."

"It doesn?t matter anyway." Large, nimble hands picked one of the torn ends of rope off the ground. "The man got wise and nixed the deal. The zebra's back, so everyone's happy again." Grabbing a handful, he placed one of the more convoluted knots in his lap and began using his fingers to tunnel through the maze of tattered fibers and tight cinches. Faint marks of vermilion chaffed his palms and the sides of his fingertips in his attempt to free the key strand from its rather intimate position just beneath the heart of the tangle.

Shaking his head resignedly at his brother's evasion, the dark-haired boy could only smile as he bent over and began gathering the strewn yards of rope that lynched the fields and leaning, splintered fence posts. With a grunt and a few awkward staggers over the loops that spilled out of his arms and dragged the ground, feeding him a mouth full of dirt and plastering smudges over the tip of his nose with every stumble, he tossed the unwieldy heap over his shoulder.

Rucia used that moment of distraction to grab his wrist, which caused the child to jump, dropping his mangled, synthetic web.

"Tavi?" the boy faced his older brother, whose hand tightened around the small cuff, wrinkling the fabric, crushing the bone beneath. Maybe biting his lip would keep the younger one from gasping, from ruining the foreboding coldness that sifted between them?

"? why did you choose that name?"

Tavi licked his lips, bit down on their rim as he his eyes fell to the ground. They rested on his brother's boots, scuffed and dusty from the jagged edges of the bluffs. Dung crusted the toe-lines in brittle, crumbling chunks. "Sometimes?" his stomach gyrated - shoulders lurched when his cheese and crackers tried to come up. Haggard breathing mixed with the scant tang of sweat from just above his upper lip meant to quell the nausea. "?I can hear you crying out at night. You say things - a lot of things? I can?t understand - but?" The child paused; his left hand scrunched the hem of his sweater, showing a sliver of his olive-toned tummy. "? you almost always call her name. It's strained when you say it, like a colt just kicked you in your chest? but you have to reach her, anyway." His liquefying, gentian eyes rose to meet his brother's firm stare; the corner of his mouth twitched. "She must have meant a lot to you? like my Relena does to me."

Rucia's glare was blank, suppressive, when he averted his gaze to look out onto the smoky horizon of mountains and a deepening blue sky. A ruffled, billowy skirt of clouds garnished the peaks, softened the contours of that rugged terrain streaked with icy gloss and powder, as though it were all merely brushed onto a stretched, worn canvas - nothing more than a cheap oil painting. "And Heero?"

A timid swallow encouraged the silence - prolonged it. "You curse him."

Cornsilk hair rustled against his back as Rucia bowed his head. His eyes fell closed, slowly, and he released a shaky breath. Almost esoteric in its suddenness, a tingle crept up his spine, scraped those bones with each step - although he didn't shiver.

Reticence haunted the air like the pulsating, almost paranormal glow of a horseshoe welded over the anvil of a run-down stable. The sparks hammered off of that luminous metal are searing, leave crescent-shaped scars on the blacksmith's wrist and fingers. Even then they spray the straw and bury themselves in its musty gut, desperate to ignite a flame. The blacksmith rubs the fresh blisters that nick his hand, eyes drawn to the embers as they continue to smolder.

Still emanating.

Still burning.

Tavi wrung his hands, chewed on his lip as he awkwardly shifted his weight between feet.

"I want? to hear about Mom and Dad."

"Hn?" His eyes flickered towards the child.

The air was suddenly cold. It might have helped if the boy could breathe, if even that fragile warmth could surround him. Clouds shrouded the sun, cast a nebulous chill over him, as though he were isolated from everything else around him. Frowned upon. So cold - so cold he winced. "You told me to study since I was bored, but?" he bit the inside of his cheek "? I want to hear about our mom and dad."

"I've told you about them a thousand times, Kid. Aren't you too old for stories now?" Tavi flinched, but Rucia appeared not to notice. From the surly rumbles that wracked his snort, he seemed to misinterpret his younger brother's lack of words for impertinence. "If only you were so interested in those textbooks."

"Why? would you think that?" Droplets embroidered his lashes, warped the clarity of his lucid, cyan irises. "I don?t see why I can?t enjoy a good story now and then, one that doesn't involve numbers or theories or me memorizing something all the time? why you don't want me to dream." Blinking, he turned to look at his older brother-- A crucifying tear, one nailed into the umber cross-stitches of his sweater, made the dye bleed.

"And? and? your eyes are always so much warmer when you tell it, almost as if? you actually like remembering. Like you need to tell it," Tavi cocked his head, voice strained, "or part of you, a memory? will die inside."

His knees dropped to the earth, arms embraced his chest. Jerking his entire body, he was riveted by a poignant jolt down his spine. "If you?re not too old to want to tell it, why does it make me too old to want to listen?"

Rucia stood, rigid, like the stable rafters - steadily weathered, steadily wearing down.

Sniffling, the little boy scrubbed the salty residue from his cheeks and snubbed his brother. Sorrel bangs kissed the last of the remnants away, leaving the ends damp and clinging to his temples in a rumpled, moist hug. "And I am interested in my textbooks, by the way."

The rustling of khaki against the grass and clammy fingers brushing the crown of his head filtered through Tavi's senses as his brother sat beside him on the hill.

Silence devoured the seconds, smothered the afternoon's coolness with humidity.

"Your? our parents were strange ones, you know."

"And you knew them well, brother?" Still runny cerulean met pale twilight when the child turned back to Rucia. Pulling his knees underneath his chin, Tavi wrapped his arms around his legs.

"Not as well as I would have liked, Kid. But at least I knew them." His hand slid down onto his little brother's shoulder. "They died before I ever really got to know either one of them - especially your father."

"Who was my father, Rucia?" Tavi leaned over on his haunches, craned his neck closer to his brother. With baited breath he waited, eyes skewering Rucia's lips. "Tell me about my father." With those suspenseful eyes, wide and gleaming in the swarthy daylight, his body so small and huddled in on itself, almost vulnerable compared to the robust trunk of the tree that stood behind him?

He looks just as tiny and helpless as he did that day, when?

"Your father was a great Dragon Rider that I met one day while on duty on a military ship-- Years before Insania took over." A glaze settled over Rucia's eyes when he voiced the afterthought, a heavy sigh lingering at the back of his throat, staggering his next words. "It was. A different war then. Tavi. One. Between the Earth and the Colonies."

"Why were they fighting, brother?"

"The people from the Colonies thought the Earth was oppressing them, which it was. They wanted to be on equal terms, not have the Earth bullying them with their blessings of unicorns. As you know," Rucia pulled his brother against his flannel-clad chest and smirked slightly, "unicorns are magical and therefore exceptionally powerful. One prick from its horn can kill a man."

Tavi nodded, a solemn stiffness in his countenance - set jaw, fixed neck.

Seeing his younger brother so stoic, so unabashedly somber--

Pure, undaunted belief.

"So what did the Colonies do?"

"They used lost technology to create mighty beasts that could fly through space and trample the earth beneath their iron-clad claws. They were able to scorch hundreds of acres with a single breath and level cities with a couple swings from their tails. Creatures so powerful that only a few would be needed."

"Dragons?" the boy murmured, his voice soft and breathless. Only psalms were mouthed with such dulcet reverence; only God should be approached with so much awe. He clutched Rucia's flannel collar.

"Yes. Five of them. And they needed special men to train them and take them to Earth."

"The Dragon Riders." Tavi looked up at his brother, clasped a lock of his limp blonde hair. "My father."

"We got into a fight, he and I, when he was on his way to Earth. My unicorn pierced through his dragon's wing, and they both plummeted into the sea."

"That's impossible." The twelve-year-old's voice was factual, expression stalwart.

"What do you--"

"You always told me that mom's brother confronted our father. You couldn?t have taken him down? you weren't even born yet."

Dread - brief poignant flashes - ricocheted off the turquoise flecks in Rucia's wide eyes, followed by his arms that tightened around Tavi's shoulders, lodging the boy in a cave of cloth and flesh. Breath instantly halted, the child tensed at this peculiar display of affection, hands trembling, while Rucia began smoothing Tavi's hair with drawling stokes. Such rough, strong fingers didn?t even graze the child's scalp.

"You're right, Kid. It was our uncle, not me. I guess that sometimes I must miss them so much I insert myself into the story just to be with them." His excuse was weak, but his face was sober, not even a wrinkle of guilt beneath his eyes to crumple the lie.

The boy's forehead nuzzled his brother's biceps as he shifted in his arms; his hair lashed out in haphazard spikes from static, like the jutting branches of the tree that sheltered them. "It?s all right, Rucia. I wish I were there, too."

Mid-stride, the man gasped, abruptly stopping his ministrations - replacing them with a few staid minutes of quiet. Taunting silence. "Anyway? your mother was a unicorn shepherdess, and her blessing had wandered near the sea where your father fell. She found him and rescued him from death."

"But he was afraid that she'd be able to recognize him, and so he ran away from her."

"He had to kill her, Tavi. He couldn?t let the rulers of the Earth know about the dragons or the Colonies' plans."

"But he didn't, did he?" Rucia felt the little boy's eyelashes flutter against his shirt, coaxing his own shoulders to slacken. His breath evened out, synchronized with each drowsy bat.

"He tried, but he couldn't." He paused, rethinking his statement. "Many times."

"They fell in love, didn't they? A Dragon Rider and a Unicorn Shepherdess." Tavi's eyes were bright when they met his brother's, the nautical blue limpid and churning from the excitement that intensified the warmth in his already ruddy cheeks.

"Eventually they did."

"And then father joined sides with mom, and he and the other Dragon Riders ended the war."

"Are you telling this story, or am I?" Rucia reprimanded him with mock sternness, lowering Tavi's head back onto his chest to muffle any further interruptions.

"Go ho-omm, peez. I'mmph sowry." The blush in his cheeks deepened. "I wonw stomph yow anympore."

"That's basically it. Even when separated by space and their ideals and battles, your parents felt each other, loved one another. Nothing could change that." Rucia chuckled, averted his gaze to the American Cream walking towards them, knees high and bowed, hips rocking promiscuously as she pranced. "Not even me."

Tavi sniffed, his body suddenly cold.

He knew how the story ended.

"What happened to them?"

"They had me almost immediately after the reconciliation between the Earth and Colonies, and we all lived our lives in peaceful days." His brow knotted, plaiting deep creases around his eyes. "A couple years before you were born? that's when Insania came into the picture and blew up the Colonies."

Small arms reached for the end of his brother's messy ponytail before a sniffle wrenched the twelve-year-old's chest. He wiped the strands across his eyes, as he often did when he was a toddler. It was a vice the blonde man didn?t have the heart to break him of, and so let the child's snot and tears wash the locks in a slobbery soap of grief.

You used to teethe on your mother's hair all the time - she was always getting the ends trimmed, claiming you made them frizzy and brittle. And then she'd just smile and laugh it off, even hand you another fist full? you wouldn't even touch mine, with hers there?

"Your father lost his life trying to keep the peace they created together? and your mother lost her soul that day she watched him die." He dug his nails into his palms. Shuddered.

She was so beautiful? my little sister - brave like Father when Cinq went up in flames. So strong, even demanding? stronger than I could ever hope to be. So. Strong.

They slaughtered you, Relena, because you fought for peace, and my punishment? is this little boy. Such an innocent child. I was punished with his love? with? love. I don't? I get to? hold? this? child? this? child?

"Why?" Tavi's sob tore him from his thoughts - his constant nightmare, one that grew longer and longer, more vivid. More graphic. "Wh-y did he have to do that? W-hy did they have ta go an' leave us alone like that?"

"Shh?" He clutched the tiny boy to him, whose form trembled violently, wrested by wet squeaks. Rucia wrapped those skinny legs around his own waist and slid a hand behind the child's head to cradle it, caressing the sensitive skin behind the little one's ear with his thumb. A cry pushed behind his scabby, tight lips.

"Shh? You're all right. We're both all right, Little One." He rocked him - rocked him. His chin swept over the mahogany crown of strands beneath him.

"You're not alone. They never meant for you to be alone, Tavi." He clenched his eyes shut, trapping the liquid sparkles from escaping - the heavy, leaden sparkles?

The sheen of a gundanium phantom.

"They loved you? your father loved you. He wanted?"

Then it stopped.

Rucia's tears dried.

His blood ran cold.

Gliding his fingers over the child's face, the man lifted Tavi's chin, tangled in runny, scintillant thread and an intricate crochet of pain. Rucia nudged the little boy's eyes open with his thumbs. "Go on inside and get washed up for supper. I don't want to have to leave you for the city in tears. You have to be stronger than--"

"You're hea-eading for Morbidia to-night?" The boy sniffed, swallowing his leftover whimpers. "Let me go."

"No," Rucia replied with firm exactness, pushing Tavi away from him and getting on his feet. Turning back towards the house - the chortling crunch of grass beneath his boots seeming to indicate amusement at the child's disappointment - he elaborated: "Morbidia's no place for a child."

"Why don?t you ever let me go?" He threw his arms out, exasperated. "I'm not so na?ve." Eliciting a growl, he followed his brother to the house, staring into the ground with a glare so heated it threatened to incinerate the ants that marched through the grass. Their ranks began to disperse, however, at the strident whine of the front door.

Intermittently knocking against the doorframe from the gust's constant whacks, it waited until Tavi's foot connected with the last step to suddenly swing back and slam him in the nose. After shoving his head back, it rammed into the door jam with a reverberant guffaw, yet remained careful about suppressing any lingering, creaking chuckles or squealing pivots - not even a single sway on the hinges.

Even his own home was against him.

"Damn it," he hissed, bringing his hands up to his face to clutch the sore appendage. Grumbling, his eyes tightening into slits of feral blue, his foot collided with screen and metal - hard. A few more colorful expletives flew from between clenched teeth.

Drawing his palm away from his nose and not finding any blood, Tavi headed for the cabinets. He reached in and pulled out two eggshell-white porcelain dishes with matching glasses. "I can handle myself." His finger scrubbed at the ingrained water spots absently.

Rucia grabbed the glasses from his brother's hands. "You think you know what's out there, but you don't."

Pulling a pitcher of ice water from the refrigerator, he poured the chilled liquid into the cups, roughly eyeing the water levels for equality. Shrill clinking, followed by a few muffled clangs and clatters, registered in his mind from Tavi's direction, who was collecting plain, tarnished flatware from a drawer beneath the counter top. "You've lived your entire life on this ranch, away from the poverty and vice and licentiousness the rest of this world's grown up with." With the brawny assuredness of a lion, he prowled over to the space beside the counter and fall wall corner, blocking Tavi's path to the table. Water sloshed out of the glass in his right hand as he shoved his arm in front of the doorway, which polished the floor with a slippery, puddling sheen. Stumbling backward from the maneuver, Tavi dropped one of his spoons. "You don?t know what people really want. You're too young to understand what the women up there would like to do to you if they only had the chance, after taking one good look at you."

"Rucia, I may only be twelve, and I've never actually seen a woman in the flesh for myself, but I know what happens with them in the bedroom. I deliver the result every year when the mares go into labor."

"Tavi?" he scolded in a warning tone.

"For goodness sake, Brother, sometimes I even have to hold the mare down when they're doing it."

"That doesn't mean, Kid, that you have to act so damn smug about it; or that you need to experience it for yourself, right now. Because what they're looking for isn?t what a mare offers a stallion, either; I hate to break it to you. That's child's play." He grabbed Tavi's chin between his thick fingers and yanked on his jaw, forcing the child to face him. Gritting his teeth, the boy squinted through the increasing pressure on his mandible, eyebrows quivering. "And let me tell you something else, Romeo, with your sweet little dove blue eyes and your shiny hair and straight teeth: you?re a pretty little boy. They'll have you. They'll have you good and long."

Tavi ripped his chin out of his brother's grasp and rubbed his jaw - staring the older man down, hostility evident in his rigid shoulders, in the occasional flaring of his nostrils. The blue in is eyes emanated, nearly glowed.

After a few moments of heavy breathing, Tavi's eyes began to relax. He smoothed out his rumpled countenance, and, sighing deeply, willed the tension to seep from his muscles - shoulders drooped; his hips lolled forward; knees partly bent. He cracked his neck. "Please, Rucia. Please let me come this time. I'll stay out of your way; you know I will." A pale brow quirked at the younger one's unusual display of supplication. "And I won?t wander off, so you don't have to worry about me, either. I just? I want to see them for myself."

"Them?"

"People, Rucia." Eyes heavy-lidded, Tavi's mouth hung partially agape - he was staring off into a vortex of memories he never had, things he never witnessed. Only from the prosaic, generalized references of his brother's lectures could he conceive them. Only when they were sitting together in front of the fireplace, the shadow of the flames reflecting through Rucia's curtain of hair, did he begin to understand them. Only between the covers of a book did he know them, vague pictures printed on his brain from letters and spaces and punctuation, black and white. They all mixed in his mind to make gray, an anonymous, lopsided figure of gray.

A man.

One that constantly reached out to him as he read. A concept he yearned to befriend.

"In all my life I've never? besides you? I haven't ever seen another creature that looks like me." His eyes were too interested in the grooves of a spoon's handle, the same one he dropped only moments ago. "I've read about them and seen pictures of them in my books, you tell me stories about them during lessons, but in all the years I can remember, I've never actually seen one for myself. Never met one." He pinned the utensil beneath his shoe, made the steel sing with agony over its mangled neck. "I want to know for sure, not just from your assurances and the money you bring back, that we're not the only humans that exist. That we're not just rotting away out here, trapped in a cage of rocks and manure we made for ourselves - because we were too scared to look beyond these mountains. I just want to know that? we're not alone."

Rucia reached out and locked Tavi's hands in his own large ones. He walked backwards, slowly, towing the lanky boy to the table. They sat down, still facing each other, their hard-set features colliding. They appeared to be struggling for some king of dominance, although their hands remained entwined.

"I've told you about Filius Insania." Tavi nodded. "The man that's responsible for all the destruction: for the Colonial genocide, the demolition of human society, for throttling the life out of nature." The boy chewed on his lip, found his eyes roving over the vast, misty ranges of the mountainside the window displayed - the peaks, so smoky, enough to asphyxiate themselves; the opalescent fish that sprang up from the stream near the fence; the lofty, slate-colored bluffs. "He's the man that started Indemnity, Kid. I've told you that a million times before." A low whistle crept through the house, rumpled the drapes and burrowed into the walls, making them groan. "He'll hurt you if he can. You know that. He wants to see anyone that believes in peace and goodness to suffer." Rucia looked straight into Tavi's remote eyes. "That means you, Tavi. He wants to see you suffer.

"Look at me!" Tavi cringed; his straying gaze returned - now startled. "You have to know that. Tell me you understand what I'm saying to you."

"I do, Big Brother." A swallow shook his little body.

No, Little One. You can't know. Otherwise you wouldn't look so confident - your eyes wouldn't smolder like that. You wouldn't be so calm.

"But? I won't let him dictate my life, like he supposedly does everyone else's."

Rucia stared at him, wordlessly. They blinked - off beat at first. Blinked. Sighed. Licked their lips. Blinked again. Another sigh.

When Rucia turned to the window.

The American Cream Draft snorted, ruffled her mane under his scrutiny as though it were a shawl that could shield her from his searching eyes. Her ears flattened.

"Come on."

"What?"

"Grab your coat and gloves. The trail's pretty rough - we head straight through that pass." He pointed out the kitchen window to the gap between the mountains, camouflaged by the dimming sky and slopes of the hillsides that turned black and ashen without the sunshine. The blades looked like wiggling fingers when the wind stirred them, like decrepit hands bursting through the loose dirt of a cemetery. They waved to him.

And the eyes of the filly looked there, too.

"I don't under--"

"You want your chance to mingle?" Tavi remained still - didn't even breathe. "Then I suggest you saddle up that American Cream you like so much and get ready to ride. We leave after dinner." Grabbing the chair's arms, the boy meant to rise from his seat, when Rucia seized his right hand. Their eyes met. "But know this: after this trip, you stay here. Indefinitely."

Silence wedged between them.

"Got it?"

Tavi smiled - a weak, sad smile. One that never met his eyes.

I'll try, Rucia? but I won?t promise you. I won?t make a promise I'm not sure I can keep. It isn't right? I just?

"On second thought, grab my cloak from the linen closet and wear that instead."

[Morrighan]

So sad!!! If only Tavi knew the truth....

Dragon Riders and Unicorns? What on earth is <i>that</i> about?

Can't wait to see more, Tomorrow!!

[Tomorrow]

I just wanted to let everyone know that I'm planning to update this story about every two weeks or so. Hence, I'm expecting to get chapter two written this weekend. Now that I'm back in school, I'm strapped for free time.

Thanks, everyone!!!

~Tomorrow

[Tomorrow]

Hi everyone...

I'm sorry I've been slacking on my writing lately. I'll spare you all the details, but let's just say that after I finally had the time (during Christmas Break), my 'writing space' was temporarily ruined. It's been difficult for me to try to write anywhere else. However, I've finally overcome this little obstacle, and I plan to have the next chapter to this out by the end of next week. It's about half-way finished.

Since I haven't been able to write, specifically, I've been doing some revising. This chapter has been revised, and I've also been revising what I originally wrote for chapter 2.

Thanks for the support and patience everyone - especially you, Morrighan!

^_^

~Tomorrow