my temple for a horse.
his earliest knowledge of these beasts of daily burden were that they were to be avoided at nearly all costs. as a scrawny child sporadically left to navigate the dusty yellow streets of the shambled town by his lonesome, sighting one of the terrifying mammoths, as they’d appeared at the time, with the loud clopping that accompanied them and legs thicker than his whole self was wide, meant only that he would be driven or shouted out of the way of the road at best. and often only as a last resort, when bystanders realized he wouldn’t move on his own and were thus forced to acknowledge that such a wretched sight even existed — always with the same reluctance, the same terse vexation he only later grew to learn was born from discomfort.
years later, under the tutelage of house cornwell, the fearful adolescent met them again in a world that could not be more different from the one he’d come. cornwell stabled horses — as all nobility of lycia did, he learned — but lord raymond had never taken to them, and so his leave from the animals had been mercifully extended once again.
and after? whether for the convenience or the money, they had simply never been a consideration past the occasional, brief contact. a short ride, whether by rental or the kindness of a passing stranger, then never seen again.
all in all, lucius is certain it would have been difficult to appoint a more ill-fitted candidate to serve as judge in such an academy-wide contest.
despite having newly arrived, he has some idea of the students here. lords and vassaled knights, future ministers and princesses and kings no lesser than the bodies of the lycian league or the etrurian crown. for him to take an eye to their horsehandling is like asking a trout to rate an eagle on its flight. nevertheless... here he walks among the stalls and rows of beast upon beast, each more extravagantly adorned than the last, a fairground replete with patterns ornate and simplistic, kaleidescopic and minimalist; with braided manes and perfumed tails, oiled saddles, caparisons, head-dresses; with creatures of every size and shape and color imaginable. and he hardly knows what he should be looking for, or at.
partway into the fourth showing row, however, his eyes land on the tallest he’s seen of them yet, towering easily head and withers over its neighbor and the partitioning wall. perhaps its the sheer size of it that gives him pause, and for an instant he feels small and thin again and staring up at the four-legged goliaths coming down the path, ready to duck out of their incoming and unrelenting pace before he’s trampled.
beside it, tending and dwarfed by her charge, he imagines is its handler — a comely young lady in aquarian teal. such is the duo that he can’t help but be curious, and chance a ( hesitant ) step nearer. ❝ this one... ❞ he begins haltingly, never quite letting his eye stray from the giant, ❝ ... is it yours? ❞
✧ // @luneigis