by kortico » Mon Jul 06, 2015 1:00 pm
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Show Name: memories to burn
Barn Name: vitali (v-tally)
Gender: stallion
personality: Vitali is rough, menacing, and an over all wad of pent up, bottled mania. Get to know him better and he isn't any better, he is not a gentleman, and he is far from being right in the head. Vitali does not talk a lot but when he does he is loud and insulting, one of those who jump to stick nicknames onto others and poke comments at flaws in others that he sees. It isn't in playful manners either, Vitali is all out doing it to be rude and strike fear in the other tolters. He doesn't have any social skills, often put into the pasture all by his lonesome because the ones that come out of being with him are bruised, battered, and bleeding with scrapes, slices, bites and bruises. Very little will he ever show any hints of emotion, ears will be forward but not perked, his eyes glossed over with a shine that could show he would wish to be somewhere else at all times. A body full of malice and temper, he isn't one to be messed with, and in case it hasn't become clear he is most definitely not to be ridden, nor groomed. His coat, however, almost always appears to be groomed- a sheen of health glowing over it in the sunlight, his hooves dirty and crusted with mud but never too long or cracked. Though his colors are rare and definitely eye catching, it is often very hard to spot Vitali in his expanse of pasture because where the trees grow tall and dark is where he likes to dwell, coming out only to eat his pickings of new hay or lumber to the water trough. Contact with humans is one thing he almost never willingly engages, catching him to fight a halter on is absolutely one of the toughest jobs in the arable and has left some poor souls with broken bones and concussions from being slammed right onto their backs and heads. Vitali does not seem to much enjoy other equine company, either, as stated above with his violent tendencies towards them as well, but a select few he can see strength and a looming, crushing ability to defend themselves in ways often not common, and those tolters Vitali has some shred of respect for, as thin as it may be. Something does not click in his mind to tell him what is right or wrong, he very well could be considered a wild animal, not an equine with an admittedly bleak history, what is known of it from his previous owners that is.
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history and how he met his bear: this story is full of downs and not many ups, but it is a story nonetheless of a monster of a horse and how he came to be who, or what, he is and how he teamed up with an equally confusing bear, of all creatures.
Vitali is said to have been born on an incredibly secluded ranch in an equally as secluded village near the border of Ukraine. The ranch was a small house, and a broken down barn with but three tolters to call it home. Open pastures were hardly able to be accessed, and thick trees instead swarmed around the farm. The night he was born was a dull, dark one, full of fog and wolves howling, the normal creepy crawly story setting. His mother had been covered the only stallion on the ranch, no humans had known of her pregnancy until the signs shown were incredibly clear, yet the night he was born they did not come to help. In the morning, when the wife came in to milk their single cow, she did not come into the normal sounds of the barn, not the crunch of wispy snow and straw, not to the animals chewing and grinding on their grain and their alfalfa, the chickens clucking rang instead to sharp shrilly that screamed murder into the early morning. Confused, the wife made her way towards the mare's stall, and what she saw startled her into sworn silence for the rest of her life. The husband could pass on the sight, however, to warn each of Vitali's ever changing owners. The story continues, to the sight that was seen. The beloved made, his mother, must have died during birth, complications happen in nature and without anyone to help she was doomed. That was less shocking, but the two other horses -the stallion, a second mare- were found but feet away, cold and as lifeless as the snow covering the ground outside. There was Vitali, though. A bright blood red and steel grey coat standing in the golden straw, emotionless as he is now, acting as if he has been standing and walking for years rather than mere hours. Fearing the colt, the husband and the wife continued to raise him with a bottle until he was old enough to be trained- at three years old. Quickly, he was sold for nothing, they wanted nothing to do with the suspicious, menacing stallion.
Loaded up into a trailer with only a few people getting injured in the process, he was soon shipped to northern Russia, to be worked as a plow equine. The same snow, just worse. He was used to the cold, it would not bother him, but he was too young- too scrawny to be dragging around fallen trees quite yet. Wait a few years, he is five. Gained enough weight and age to now be put to work. Surrounded by draft horses, Vitali could haul as much as them, and faster. It was incredibly shocking to all of the workers, and he was not feared but rather spoiled at this farm, no matter how distant from the world he always actually seemed. Life was good, until a year later when his sixth birthday dragged around and the same conditions of night came. Grey skies, fog, calls and cries from wolves biting at elk's heels. When the head workers went out the break of dawn to finish their season's trees, they came into a barn with only one standing horse, and an entire squad of Belgian drafts missing from the night, no hoof prints leading to or from the barn, no open stalls where they would have rested. The next day, Vitali was loaded into a trailer once more and shipped off to another part of Russia, to become something people would admire. A circus performer. Vitali did not have to know any tricks, aside from rearing whenever a whip was thrown at him and wearing some incredibly stupid, feathery plume of a costume. No, his looks brought in the money enough. Swarms of people visited just to see the rare-colored stallion, who simply lived the months he was at the circus standing, still as a statue, in the back of his metal-barred stall, watching with a blank stare the flashes of cameras and screaming, pointing children.
It was a night one of their prestigious, white stallions got a bit lame and couldn't perform. The routine would have been easy, a horse game of follow the leader with a human only giving you a few could cracks on the back with the whip if you were off the line with the other equines, and the occasional rear thrown in. They knew Vitali had some knowledge of those tricks- enough, apparently. And so he was the replacement. So far it was going good. The first round- easy. Blaring lights practically blinded him, but Vitali did not act up, and nothing supernatural happened, he was even unaffected by the thunder of clapping that followed after. The tight rope walkers had now finished, and it was the horses' second time to go up, the last performance for the night. Trot, turn, circle -ouch, crack of a whip- stop, rear, then repeat. Four minutes in and this was happening. Hooves were all in tune to each other, but Vitali did not seem amused. Not that he ever does to begin with. Halfway through the performance and he stops. Ignoring the sound of the whip by his head, ignoring the sting of it as it strikes against his flank once, twice, three times. He stands still, watching the ring leader with a gaze that was like still, glassy water. Once more a crack of a whip and then chaos happens. From one side of the large, striped tent comes rises of voices, which quickly turns to screaming and then panic, a swarm of people pushing and falling and fighting their way to rush out of the entrance, as the tent rises in searing flames. Collecting hooves, Vitali didn't stop to gallop his way out from the burning tent, in tune to the pounding hooves behind him, the performance horses had escaped, but went their separate directions.
They threw ropes at him. Chains, anything to hopefully snag a limb or to go around his neck snug, it didn't work but to trip him up now and then, the stallion swerved and smoothly jumped over accidental obstacles. Away from the burning tent and the circus grounds, he paused in the beginnings of the nearby forest, sides heaving and a thin coat of sweat foaming on his neck and his chest, the awakening cold of the snow was welcome. He was not alone, however, the low cry of another animal captured his attention. It was the circus' bear, free of her cage and chains, who had also found an escape in the forest. Yvon was her name. Vitali did not find her important, but the animal's strength and flame for escape he could respect. And so- that is how it started. The two were found and promptly shipped by the circus' main foundation to America, then. Yvon was let go, Vitali sold to here, Auburn Leaf Stables. The two are not seen together anymore, nobody knows of the bear's whereabouts these days, but every now and again, before the sun even rises, a stable worker has been heard of seeing a brown bear wandering the far end of Vitali's pasture.
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Last edited by
kortico on Fri Sep 25, 2015 9:09 am, edited 4 times in total.
