Deviation Actions
Literature Text
Before my friend is due to arrive I begin pacing my stall, frantic to get out and I make the stable boys nervous. They don’t like working with someone who hasn’t been “broken in”. My companions are “broken in” and it makes them complacent, apathetic, and dull. None of them are really worth conversing with anymore; they’ve lost their fire.
Not me. The stable hands wanted to make me the same as my companions but I wouldn’t change for them. I wouldn’t let the fire in my belly wan enough to allow blinders and crops turn me into the soft servants my companions are now.
My friend is different. He’s the only one who embraced the fire in me. Instead of demanding it, he humbly asked, as any human should humbly ask of anything from my proud and powerful species. We were never meant to be tamed, and my friend saw that. It must have been the stardust that helped him understand the truth of how the human/equine relationship was supposed to work.
I know when he is coming to visit me. The air changes when he is near. The humans can’t feel it, only the equine know that feeling. Like the air just before a lightning storm. He is coming now, and something is different this time. Something feels... stronger.
When he doesn’t have responsibilities to the other humans, my friend agrees to ride me bareback. He knows that’s how it should be. The moment he is mounted I take off through the barn, the doorway wide and the land beyond empty of anything but fields of dry grass. The conditions are perfect: the night is clear and cool, and the stars litter the sky like polished river stones. So many stars that we will not need extra light on this ride, I know the way.
My friend is nervous; something big has changed. He holds my mane tightly and his legs against my flank are already slick with sweat. He is scared of the change, and the air crackles again with that powerful feeling. Dry grass and stardust fills my nostrils as my breath works through my body, carrying us faster and deeper into the night. He needs to let go. I need to let go. Allowing your spirit to run, to soar, is the only way to keep it clear. I know this already, but my friend is still learning.
He reaches for something and clumsily slips it onto his hand before grabbing back onto my mane for stability. I feel cool leather where his hand used to be now, and wet drops. He is crying because he is scared; I push on, even faster now. My hooves cut through the hard earth with a force I hope will be strong enough to sooth my friend’s anxiety. I know what is coming and I don’t want him to be afraid.
The wind pushes through us must have carried my message to him. The wind is always good to me like that. I can feel him relax now and begin moving with the flow of my running, and the hard wind. He is ready, I can feel it.
Like the lightning storm, the air becomes charged in an instint. Energy rushes through me, more energy than I have ever felt before. On my back, my friend has finally accepted his change and he is filled to bursting with stardust. This is how we were meant to be: stardust and lightning.
I pause only to throw back onto my hind legs and paw violently at the air, and my friend is no longer scared. He is a part of me now, and I a part of him. We come back to the earth with a roar of thunder heard for miles along the empty plains.
It is here that he dismounts and comes to look at me, at us. Finally, there is more stardust in his eyes than dry grass. For too long I watched him as a pile of hay, ready to light at any moment but unable to do so. Now, he is lit. Now he knows the fire in his belly is the same as mine.
He smiles at me and I nudge him in silent agreement. This is what happiness is: freedom.
I had a bunch of ideas for this round but, again, I was too short on time (traveling for work a lot) to really execute many of them. This idea stuck out to me though. Soldier Pegasi is a horse person, needless to say
Overall, there aren’t too many issues with syntax, just a couple missed commas and one word spelled incorrectly (“instant”). While I’m often a stickler for repeated words, I think the repetition works well, given the simplicity and directness of the prose. You also make it clear right away that this is being told from the horse’s point of view before the narrator refers to himself as “equine”. It’s easy to understand and picture the scene of a night ride.
I like the imagery you used to describe the scene, and how Faris and the horse are “starlight and lightning”. I feel like we don’t actually see too much of Faris’s character here, but the clues that the horse gives us are telling, such as how he “humbly asked” instead of demanding, and Faris crying because he’s scared. These opened up dimensions of his character that we didn’t see in the first round, when Faris came off as confident to the point of arrogance. I would have liked to know more about what he’s so nervous about, though my guess is that it’s because of his first transformation. Am I right? The subtle hints given about his character are certainly interesting aspects to expand on when the narration isn’t quite so limited.