Post by Heron on Jun 15, 2022 22:01:28 GMT
Enorawyn was a little smarter than the men gave her credit for. When the wind smelled candy-sweet and the grass was orange, she knew she was no longer in the lands of Middle Earth. While she could say no longer being within reach of Sauron and Saruman was something of a personal relief, she felt torn by her sense of duty to her homeland (which she felt she was abandoning, that she hadn't asked for this transfer aside), and by the loss of Ballod, the handsome stormy grey stallion gifted to her personally by her king for her aid in the war efforts.
She missed Ballod immediately. And every other horse she'd collected. Some even from the enemy, tamed and taken not as trophies, necessarily, but because a true rider of Rohan can never resist a horse. Any horse. Even one of Haradrim breeding, say.
Though she awoke in a field of this strange orange grass that prickled her bared arms where her leathers didn't cover, no horses, no troops, all alone, she did see in the near distance an elvish-looking structure. Tall and white and arched.
At first she thought the flash of grey, when she approached, might be her beloved Ballod. There was a fountain obscuring her view. But then she got around the fountain and found that what awaited her was not, in fact, well, it was a stallion, stormy charcoal in pelt, but his mane, his tail, his fetlocks, and his eyes were all white fire.
And those teeth were something ominous.
But strange new world, strange new horses?
Two free stars and here's 5BP to cover the third as I make Enorawyn's first shiny ever a Firemane Efreet! Because we need to go zoom zoom.
Firemane Efreet Ballod -- Enorawyn
He's her beloved stallion, alright, he's just changed a little and not in any good way. I'll get to writing this one eventually.
Looking around, she found the ornate saddle her king had also gifted her for her aid in the war effort. "Ballod?" she asked, holding the saddle heavy in her numbing hands and staring at the ghost-flame stallion with the teeth of a Warg. He acquiesced, it seemed, to obediently trotting up alongside her. His pelt, while darker, held all the same markings it had when he had been merely a mortal horse.
Experimentally, Enorawyn put the saddle on his back. Ballod allowed it. He allowed her to fasten it, too, without even trying his old inflation trick (which she could wait out, she was patient with stubborn horses). It seemed her old friend had gotten frighteningly smarter in his new incarnation. But he still seemed to hold her in some kind of regard, because he let her mount up and he let her lead the way, although he set his own pace. Apparently he had also gotten much, much, much, much faster.