Username: Desmond
Name: Sterling
Prompt: Sterling should forgive himself. Really. Truly. He should. It's not healthy. However.
It's his own fault that he's alone, which only makes sense if he can just explain.
He grew up just about joined at the flank with another colt from his year, Steel. They were rarely seen without the other unless their mothers had given them That Disappointed Mother Look and restricted them to their sides. They'd made plans to start a joint herd together, protecting each other and their families one and the same.
But when the time came, Steel left. Sterling did not.
He'd claim he was worried about his mother. Or his aunt. Or maybe he had concerns about his dad's health. He had to be there to protect them... But truth be told, they were in fairly good health, for their ages. He simply wanted... To keep it that way.
Steel foraged on his own for a few months, then wound up on the losing end of a battle in a dangerous part of the woods. Sterling knows - had he been there, things would have been different. Steel was smaller, faster - Sterling was the big and powerful one.
Alone and badly wounded, Steel tried to get back home. Back to his brother-in-heart. The cold and the bears cut him short.
Sterling knows it's not his fault. That he should forgive himself of the blame he put on his shoulders. If he had just been there like he promised... Maybe things would have been better.
Bonus: partnering with
iShame!
2089 is a mare in a rival herd that sometimes seems to appear to Sterling in snowstorms. Like a dream or a vision, she seems to stand and judge him from afar. It's all imagination and hallucination, a sort of blizzard mirage, if you will, but it's always very clearly her. He doesn't know if she's some goddess come to punish him - judging him unworthy even of her efforts - or if she's merely a phantom behind the veil of death, waiting for the moment to strike and steal away his soul. Or maybe she's an ancestor spirit, appearing to declare him unworthy of his lineage, no matter how mundane?