by Jackson LaCroix on August 3rd, 2010, 12:28 am
Traveling through the outskirts and depths of the countryside provided more quiet ease then LaCroix would have roughly admitted to. The journey to the east was filled with a consortium of tracks, some found and others forged. He instinctively used natural landmarks to frequent and reposition the trio between merchant wagons, chased herds of plant eating mammals, hunting shadows, and campfires of gluttonous moonshine filled raiders. Foraging for nuts and berries, he fed the horse and made certain the girl didn’t loose weight. At nights when they fed upon smoked food and grain he set up snares for rabbit, washing foraged herbs and vegetables within the streams of fresh water that poured almost frequently through the seams that cleaned away their scent. Other days he had to dig for water, using the skills that had kept him alive as both an efficiently hungry predator and full prey.
The foundation of rock was in some way serene as was the flexibility of a water’s spring. The simplest themes and elements were somehow the strongest and most evocative when experienced for the first time. The variety of terrain kept their trek moving like an anthem to it’s verse, interlocked through the singularity of instruments combining wet moss under the breakers, dry bark basked unto the rhythmic sun and the consistency of earth that reacted to every note.
He respected the girl’s space, but did nothing to stop the odd branch from bending off his leg to hit her arm. Sometimes it tickled, other times it probably hurt, leaving whatever bond that forged them together rise surprisingly up like a geyser and fall as fast as a thrown stone to earth. The things people did that transcended words or didn’t add up to a full sentence came as swiftly as a scalpel or crashed as slowly as age. Meaning was measured in more then skin but the flesh beneath. The simplest gift of a grain of sand could transcend the castle or even the empty tide. So between them, it was utilitarian yet unmentionably strange to share even a meal with someone that he hadn’t planned on killing or extorting. The feeling that had trailed him like signaling smoke made sense now. She looked unsettling similar to a woman Jackson had known on the inside, down face first against the water’s surface of lake ravok. It was a coincidence to those who believed in them, to Jax it had to stay firmly business.
Looking up from around the fire on their seventh night out, the horse nudged it’s nose against his cheek and the man smirked. “Never should have fed the horse that apple.. can’t get it’s appetite out of the saddlebag.” He knocked his forehead against the whiney of it’s muzzle, laughing unexpectedly like a quickly opened gift. “You treat him better then yourself.”
One afternoon Cross stopped near a hidden pond, letting the beast regain it’s strength while the light tingled through the spaces between leaves, turning to the child in thought. “Watch .”
He moved calve deep into the sway and dived under it’s water, then as the bubbling seconds passed fluently into an imposing lack of breathe, out rose a wet man to the belly who while still, pressed up revealing the length of a horse. Half equine and half man, LaCroix had used their stallion as a morph model over the last week, rebuilding the bone and muscular structure of the horse. It’s fur was rich brown tinged blond under the light, agile and strident.
“I’m sick of walking.. aren’t you?”
