#balios

[argetcross]

I commissioned Balios and Xanthos from @saturnvs a little while ago and I realized I never posted it here! She makes the most amazing and joyous horse illustrations - please go check out her work!

[jemmaherondale]

“I told you before, Jem, that you would not leave me,” Will said, his bloody hand on the hilt of the dagger. “And you are still with me. When I breath, I will think of you, for without you I would have been dead years ago. When I wake up and when I sleep, when I lift up my hands to defend myself or when I lie down to die, you will be with me. You say we are born again. I say there is a river that divides the dead and the living. What I do know is that if we are born again, I will meet you in another life, if there is a river, you will wait on the shores for me to come to you, so we can cross together.” Will took a deep breath and let go of the knife. He drew his hand back. The cut on his palm was already healing- the result of the half dozen iratzes on his skin. “You hear that, James Carstairs? We are bound, you and I, over the divide of death, down through whatever generations may come. Forever.” He rose to his feet and looked down at the knife. The knife was Jem's, the blood was his. This spot of ground, whether he could ever find it again, whether he lived to try, would be theirs. He turned around to walk to Balios, towards Wales and Tessa. He did not look back.

[myangelbach]

I would never get over the fact that we don't have the following flower cards:

- Balios and Xanthos (like man, they appeared in two Shadowhunters series)

- Belial (only villain who doesn't have one, a shame)

- unseelie king

- ELLA HERONDALE (you are telling me that Pickles the Kelpie is more relevant than Ella???)

- Julie Beauvale

- Alexander Lightwood (little)

- Rosemary Herondale

If you have more please feel free to add them

[books-and-draws-eclectic]

It's like every time I randomly reread some chapters in TID, I uncover new stuff.

Like here.. Will is trying to find Tessa after she's been kidnapped by Mortmain. He's taking a short break to give himself and Balios some rest, and it's Tessa's voice in his mind that wakes him up <3

[adiyahahah]

31052020

[hiraethwyl]

Balios sprang forward out of the stables, head high and wings stretched wide. Feathers fluffed the dark bird had puffed himself up in apparent size, making him almost as large as the older chocobo behind him.

Keenaire clicked his tongue once. Twice. The knight gave a rolling sigh of frustration as Balios turned a wide circle in the yard, kicking clumps of grass and dirt behind him as he raked the ground with his claws.

“Balios haw. Haw damnit.” The elezen’s voice sounded a bit like a growl but whatever consternation he may have been feeling in the moment didn’t seem to bother the bird under him in the least. Balios continued to turn in a clockwise direction, letting out a challenging squawk when he caught sight of Dauntless and proceeding to posture at the older bird, ducking his chest up and down and weaving from side to side. Keenaire’s less than pleased noises continued as he stood in the stirrups to keep from being unseated over the chocobo’s neck.

Dauntless, for his part, observed the commotion with a grace born of age. He wasn’t inclined to respond to Balios’s challenging because he didn’t have anything to prove. And he apparently had more care for his delicate rider than the other bird, tilting his head before craning it at an angle that he could see Lyrin’a in his peripheries. The keeper reached out and patted the calmer chocobo’s neck.

“Thank you Less. I don’t think I could do that.”

That being stay astride the strutting Balios as Keenaire was doing. Albeit the elezen was grunting with the effort. He flicked a glance at Lyrin’a, “Does he do this with any other birds?”

“No. He does like picking fights with wildlife though.”

Keenaire had finally seemed to get the younger bird under hand, having turned him in the correct direction and faced him away from Dauntless. He exhaled a harsh breath. “That I expect, he’s trained to protect his rider.” He glanced back at the miqo’te. “And with you everything looks like a threat.”

“Fair enough.” Lyrin’a chuckled. He clicked his tongue and Dauntless ambled forward. As soon as Balios saw him the bird began to weave. That was shut down quickly by an irritable squawk from the larger chocobo. Enough was apparently enough.

Lyrin’a clung to the saddle before looking at Keenaire. “Where to?”

[imissthefire]

Why did I just convince myself that the horses were named Balios and Thanos, not Xanthos?

[didoofcarthage]

Automedon with the Horses of Achilles by Henri Regnault. French, 1868. Oil on canvas. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

From the MFA:

Regnault’s painting illustrates a story from Homer’s Iliad. Automedon, chariot driver for the Greek warrior Achilles, restrains the horses Xanthos (behind) and Balios, two beasts who could predict the future. As Regnault wrote, “the horses, aware that their master [Achilles] is taking them into combat, and that this combat will be the last and will cost him his life, struggle and wrest with the groom who has come to take them from their pasture. One of them, chestnut brown, rises like a great dark phantom, outlining himself against the sky. I wanted to give the picture a foretaste of disaster.”