~~~~ Static ~~~~
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Where: He has no clue, somewhere off the road.
With: He see's a small group of equids nearby...
Feels: Disoriented, sore, and for the first time ever, afraid.
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Words: 2,2352 weeks ago today
Static kicked out fiercely with his hind legs as he gave one more baleful shriek of a whinny, bearing his teeth at the intruders and fighting back with every ounce of his being. But they kept coming. Another sharp kick, hitting only air as he lunged into a last resort fit of bucking, but with no warning, his legs fell out from underneath him with the swift jerk of a rope. He’d forgotten it was attached until just then, and the air rushed right out of him as soon as his shoulder connected with the stony riverside. It was a beautiful twilight, the moon just about to rise in the sky. The river was rushing serenely along side him, the spray off it dampening his coat, the cool breeze giving him goose flesh… and dead quiet except for his own unheard screams. The air was heavy with panic. He struggled with the men frantically as they began to tie him up, biting, spitting, swatting at them with his tail. He’d only just strayed from home a few minutes to drink from the river. He’d never thought something like this would happen, or at least not something that would catch him so terribly off guard. He and Rifle had been having the greatest of times searching for strange and unusual stones just moments ago, Rifle’s love for sparkly things insatiable… but Rifle wasn’t here right now. He was back with Halo, with the others… oh how he’d never thought it would end like this. He wanted to go out in a blaze of glory! Or saving a damsel in distress! Something heroic!! But not this… and as all 4 legs drew together with the tightening of the inescapable knot, the men gathering around him in a huddle to discuss what was to be done next, he knew that his fate was sealed.
Present
Static slumped groggily in the back of the shiny, red stock trailer as it rattled on down the road, his eyes barely half open from the sedatives as he blinked into the bright light. Cuts and bruises riddled his legs and barrel, and his head hung down so low, that his nose would randomly brush the sparsely flung bedding if they hit a bump in the road. He regarded it as the yellow, tasteless stuff that he occasionally munched when he got desperate. It was nothing like the meadow grass he’d grown up on, but it was better than starving to death, which is what was happening to him little by little as time marched on. The natural sheen of his fur was long gone, replaced with a shocking, man-made glimmer, which was produced by a strange lather they’d soaked him with earlier. Whether it was this that caused him to itch so terribly, or the fact that they’d clipped his hair down to the skin all over but his mane, tail, feathering, and chest hair, he couldn’t be certain at this point, but he still couldn’t get over the way his coat looked. Like, like the way the light refracts off the banks of a frozen puddle that’s just starting to melt off with the dawn, when the sun is just beginning to shine over the vast and glorious Alps…. Oh, how that seemed like only a distant memory now. He could tell it was some time in the early morning, just by the amount of light filtering in, but he’d lost all track of time after the first 3 days. One place to another, back and forth, new faces every time.
The first few places that had him weren’t very nice at all. He got the majority of his injuries from them, the scuffs on his legs from knocking knees with the other poor creatures he was penned with. He tried to forget faces, voices, frightened eyes that were all searched out for that glimmer of hope that never came. But they kept coming back, every time he managed to nod off. Their last, frail pleas to him for help as he was ushered carelessly from the area to be shipped away, a hysterical mare being sedated as they took her foal from her… and nearly every destination afterward was the same old story set in repeat, though the latter of the places he was taken to actually wasn’t quite as bad. However, you have to understand that none of these places were at all pleasant to begin with, so he judged them by degrees of misery instead of comfort. This latest place was much more open, spacious, so it rated on the lower end of the misery chart. There were less equids crammed into each pen, slightly better living conditions, along with some strange pellets that he was informed were edible. He didn’t dare touch them. And the people just kept coming and coming… floods of them. Hoards. All of them scanning the pens as though predators on the prowl, weighing up their options, calculating... by the way they acted, it was as though he was some prized thing to be obtained at all costs. They had him cleaned up like something prized at least, as were all the others, though he was one of the last to be taken out of the pen. There was some sort of meaning to what order the equids were called away in, some pattern, but he couldn’t quite place it until later on. They led him down a few halls, a scratchy halter on his face that still plagued him to this hour, and that was right before they took him to… to the dome. Oh my, the noise. They stood him up on a pedestal, keeping him from rearing in fright as somebody over a loud speaker spoke very quickly and clearly to one of the largest crowds of humans he hoped he’d ever have to see again. He could see the flash of yellow tags flying up from all over, eager chattering all about, and even though he had no idea what was happening to him, he got this gut feeling that he was being competed for… somehow. But competed for why?
It was only in between the loud place and the trailer that he was able to ask a nearby equid mare, one in a separate pen, if she knew what was happening. She was an odd thing for sure, letting the humans touch her all over and seeming to enjoy it when she was hauled up on stage just before him. So in other words, she was the perfect one to ask, since she obviously knew what she was doing. “You don’t know?” she asked him sweetly, looking somewhat baffled as she discreetly eyed him from under her lashes. “You’re a fertile stallion, sir, and quite a peculiar one at that. Don’t you know how lucky you are?" He blinked dumbly for a moment as he briefly mulled over what the pristine creature was telling him, giving a hard swallow as it started to numbly penetrate. Peculiar? And besides that, weren’t all healthy stallions his age fertile? After their 4th birthday... he didn’t like where this was leading. “I’m sorry miss, but I’m afraid I don’t quite follow…” he answered her with progressively widening eyes, the swallowing now something involuntary that threatened him at every moment. She chuckled warmly, crossing the space between them to arch her neck gracefully into his pen. “Aww, you’re new, aren’t you? That's nice.” She cooed under her breath, “You see, since you're coat is so aesthetically appealing to the humans, you will be "seeing" many, many mares, young and old, at your new herd. All of them bearing enviable bloodlines like me and yourself, which is more than any equid could ask for...” she kept right on talking to him in that silky, amiable voice, and he thought his heart was going to leap right out of his chest and gallop away as something clicked in the back of his mind. "Seeing"... Oh... Oh... they were going to breed him... repeatedly... oh flystrike! And with, with mares that, that he’d never met before in his entire life! Oh... and all mares just like this one too, ones who'd never known anything more. Never known the taste of sweet, mountain greenery on a crisp morning. The feel of the wind in your mane as you run over endless terrain. The feeling that you could go anywhere, do anything, without any kind of limits or boundaries… but he had. And he wanted it back.
He wanted it now to the point of sickness. But as he collapsed into a lying position in the back of that trailer, wincing as a scuff on his knee connected with the cold floor, he made a snap decision, right then and there. This wasn’t going to be his life. He was almost positive that if he did in fact live through this, he would fight them to the last mile on it. And that’s when the miracle of all miracles happened. As they hit a pot hole, a truly monstrous pot hole that is, the structure gave a terrible clang that caused his ears to ring, caused his entire body to rise about an inch off the ground before being cruelly slammed back to earth. And that’s when the trailer door magically drifted open, the rapidly receding scenery startling him as he stared on in shock. He’d been back there for what seemed like an eternity. A choking amount of time when all you have to do is shuffle about in empty silence. He’d inspected the door multiple times, the walls, the ceiling, clover buds, even the floor. But he’d never expected the door to fly open like that; it had seemed too secure from the inside. He almost didn’t trust it as a real opportunity at first, like maybe they were just teasing him, a game of cat and mouse as it were… But as the wind whistled and whirled against that loosely swinging door, the fresh air euphorically drinking into his now flared nostrils like heaven on earth, he did something so impulsive, so reckless, so insane that it rivalled something his brother would do. Perhaps the scent of freedom had been too much for his severely addled state? Though whatever the reason, Static jumped.
If the truck that towed his trailer hadn’t taken that corner right when it did, he wouldn’t have survived it. If there hadn’t been a slope curling down into the cushy underbrush just where he managed to hit, it might have torn all of his limbs off. Many factors that applied to that moment could have quickly ended him without even enough time to reflect upon his misfortune. But alas, the stallion hit the ground with a thud that knocked the breath clean out of him, and the rolling effect that suddenly took hold flung him like a doll down the side of the hill. When he finally stopped, it must have been the adrenaline that got him up after he regained his function to breath. By some freak accident, he wasn’t seriously injured either. Maybe some deep tissue bruising, and a cut or two, but he felt more alive than he’d ever been. He pulled himself into a wobbly standing position, the world giving a queasy funhouse tilt from his rendition of a rolling log, but he was off and running with such a fierce determination, it didn’t dawn on him yet that he had no idea where he was running to. Away, that’s where he was running to. And that’s all he needed. They would never catch him again; they would never even see him again, for that matter. And that’s when he finally stopped to catch his breath, skidding in the loose dirt a few paces short of a yard as he gathered himself for the next spurt… and that’s when he saw them, his vision still slightly marred from the sedatives and the fall.
They were a small group, only several equid lengths away, mostly female as far as he could tell, but the only one he could really tell anything about was the white one. Shocking white patches against dull grey. She stood out like a shining star in his line of sight. But he couldn't concentrate. His coat gave another fantastic gleam in the light as his chest heaved with exertion, the heat of the day catching up with him faster than anything else as he tried to gather his thoughts... but, why was it so hot out? The stallion paused as sweat began to bead up in his fur, not appreciating the breeze that had been roaring through that trailer fully until right then. There was something wrong here. Something very, very wrong. And he didn't know what yet. He looked around in an almost frightened daze after he managed to tear his eyes from them, giving a little staggering dance to the side as he started to try and really look at things. Nothing added up. Nothing looked the same. Not even the mountains! And they always looked the same! He looked a lot like some stunned animal after it'd been hit in the road, the way he kind of aimlessly wandered in a circle with that halter tightly clinging to his face. Where was this place? Where was he?
({Thanks Bantard! <3 Muahaha, let my evil rein of text begin! >8D})
Sorry 'bout that, guys. And poor Static! *hugs* }
