So perfect. Love this.

Tracking this as wellll~

Everyone - Thank you. <3

Pumpkinseed - They have been acquainted before as fawns. Though you and Eraline obviously do not recall. He is happy to sit with her either way. :3

That is fine. Understandable. :3

My apologies for disappearing like that! I was appearing as a fawn to my friend, so I'm attempting to fix it haha.

I've been looking at this, but haven't tracked it. I'm so smart.
c: hello.

Oh, that's fine c:
I get Bishop and Rook confused constantly, so I check the map. Every single time. > >
I'm curious as to who you mixed it up with, because I'm curious. Always. |D

Oh, of course. A very good job at that, indeed!
I think the same part glitches in their pictograms, leaving just the star and cross. I'm not sure, though.
And I see! That's happened before, and I can see how. XD

Tracking this SO hard!

♥

"You and your brother...too much alike."

She hadn't noticed it before, until now. Still, her voice is soft, apologetic. "I didn't mean for that to happen."

His words confuse her, and maybe it shows in the way her eyes narrow and her ears fall back against her head. She hears an implication that does not resonate - it's familiar, the same thing Bishop had implied once. But it's the other thing he says that hurts her the most. No one means to bring the dark. It is the thing she has always feared, always felt about herself. With her father, whom she casted the shadow over. Bishop, too, once or twice. Darcy, always. And now, the friend that she had once played with as a fawn, who had kept by her side that day at the Drinkplaats.

Who'd turned himself into a squirrel to make her laugh. She had hoped that they could play like that again today too.

The young doe turns her eyes from him, directs her gaze to the poppy field in the distance. "You are insinuating things that I can tell you with confidence are not the case." finally, she looks at him again, studies what little of his face he can see beyond the mask. Flashes of fur around his eyes. "Are we friends, Buck Rook, or am I missing something?"

She leaves his question hanging in the space between them, spitefully perhaps. She is not a fool, she will not allow herself to be baited into this game. Too proud, despite her often desperate attempts to please those around her. Too proud to allow this young stag to pull her toward total exposure. Eraline thinks about how quickly he had run today when they'd played, how she'd lost him in the birch, and feels a bit of that distance growing between them even now, though they are not moving. Nothing but their words. The young doe lifts her head higher, straightens up, allows him his condescension without any attempt to draw his attention back. That would mean she'd lost, wouldn't it?

His next words seep into the darkest crevices of her mind, slow like thick molasses. It frightens her how he seems to know about all the things that have been haunting her lately. Friendship. What is it indeed? Had she not asked herself this very same question several days before?

"I suppose," she tries, already regretting it. "friendship is a bond. Bonds do not abide by the laws of loyalty and understanding. They simply are. And they are breakable, which is the most frightening thing about them. Perhaps too, it is a sharing of experience. A need to protect. A form of love. Perhaps."

A wry smile ghosts her lips. Something tight and painful. Now the admission, the loss: "But the truth is I do not know myself. Sometimes it is just a feeling that I recognize immediately, no rhyme or reason. Other times it is elusive, and I am friendless, without joy. Whatever it is...whatever it really is, I had thought that at least, you and I were bonded. You being, in essence, my oldest bond aside from those whom I call family."

The sudden rise in his voice, the venom in his outburst shakes her to her core. She jerks, her ears falling back again, suddenly heavy and small beneath the intensity in his stare. He says things that strike the chords inside of her, each time a little bell of truth ringing in her ears. It is true, mostly. She had always remembered the little fawn who had kept her company that day. The one who had made her smile, before her life had nearly come crashing down with her father. But when she had seen him that day, him among his well-won herd, she had not found that same fawn from her childhood. She had found something larger, something stronger, something wild - and he had been, for a moment, a reflection of her desire. Of Bishop, the one who made her heart race. The one with whom she danced. But she had remembered, after the haze, after the initial blinding by her feelings. Had latched onto the idea that her friend had returned, that she could now seek him out and, perhaps, turn into a squirrel to make him laugh too.

But he gives her no time to say any of this, and when she sees that he is ready to bolt she does not try to stop him. Left standing behind the log he'd been inhabiting - and she had so casually invaded - she watches him leaves her, hooves thundering, his word echoing again and again in her mind until she can hardly hear anything else. More pain, a heavy weight in her chest. More tears threatening at the rims of her eyes. She dips her head back, does not let them fall. Not here, in his space.

The young doe turns and makes her way to the place she now calls home, though the trek is slow, dream-like. A reawakening of the awareness of the darkness in her own soul. She is toxic.

There is a mischievious sparkle in his eyes as a chuckle bubbles from his vocal cords. "They do not call me The Chariot for nothing, Little Clover. Though there must always be something to pull me forward."

Had she even given him a chance he would not have been able to give her a direct answer. For who could give a name to shadows and whispers of a long dead past?
Swift and agile he leapt back from the flying dirt. He snorted good naturally before darting after her again.

The stag's breathing was slowing, coming to an easy rhythm. It had never really been hard to catch his breath after a good run. He turned his head slightly at an angle to see her through the openings in his mask. Oh, how could one explain the object he saw flash across his mind? An image, a memory.

"Hm... Imagine... A stone. The most round you have ever seen. Flatten it and double it by two... maybe four. Sit them on their edges and place a larger flat stone upon the twins. Imagine vines that connect this to...Mm... Let us say a creature of sorts. Faster then you or I. Let us sit upon the large rock and allow our fast creature pull. The round stones beneath us spin and we move. Swifter then either of us can move our selves thanks to our creature friend."

A slight chuckle escaped him. "Well... I suppose that is the best explanation I can muster."

He watches her curiously as she silently visualizes what he had tried to describe. An amused smile spreading across his lips as she spoke.

"Oh, it changes. From time to time. ...more often then not. Perhaps a pretty face..." His eyes rove across the mask she wore, tracing the hidden features from memory. A time before she hid them away. "Or my other half when nothing else moves me."

(It happens. : )

His smile turns into something more faint, ghostly even as he responds. Though his tone seems affectionate, teasing it is distant. A slight underlining change that was more then a mood.
"Perhaps a mirage is all I really am. A mirror image. A faint memory. Maybe this is all I will ever be... or wish to be."
Enough of this. He rises to his hooves and with a flash of light and a merry whistle the young doe was no longer green.
"Hm, gold. I think I like the original shade better," he teased playfully.

(<3 The last time we'll probably get to RP. Hope you don't mind.)


Eraline smells him before she sees him. He has that familiar musk that reminds her of Bishop but isn't. It's something close, but headier. Unrefined and fickle. When she lifts her head from beneath the water he is standing there watching them and she, once nervous and ashamed to be caught under his stare, now stands easily and makes her approach. She bows, and lets the silence of the after fill the space between them. There, a familiar mask. A butterfly. A runner. "It's been a long time." She says finally as she approaches and touches her cheek to his. "A very long time."

"I used to feel the same." She says after a moment of consideration. It isn't all that difficult to understand - not for her, not anymore, when she has understood since the day he blew up at her after his conflict with Darcy. She has always known, and when she lifts her eyes to meet the warm color in his again she tries to show him in a look. "But I feel differently now. It's possible to disappear forever, even when you have everything you could ever want. Or think you want."

The doe's gaze sweeps across the hills in the distance, a thoughtful hum and the beginnings of an ache in her chest. She had hoped that he wouldn't come back before she'd gone. This way she wouldn't be reminded of another friendship she would be leaving behind. "I went...with my former grandfather out into the mountains. I thought of you often, and the things you said about the...'chariots.' I tried to look for one but even there, away from this place, there were none." When she turns to him again there is a smile on her face, soft and tired. "You should know that I will always think of chariots, and even now do."

Perhaps, when the moment finally came for her, the one that seemed so close and yet not close enough, but approaching steadily - perhaps then, she will see the chariot. It seems like a thing you would see in transition.

His words are beautiful as they always are. This is something she had never seen in Bishop. Rook had a darkness in him that he didn't try to hide when he felt it, but there was also the other side, that wistful, dream-like perception of life that made her imagine things she had never thought to imagine before. Clouds. Castles. What is a castle? She feels the meaning niggling in the back of her mind, somewhere deep and lost. It's there, waiting to be uncovered, perhaps the same way the word 'snow' had been so long ago. That is what makes it easy for her to refute the things he says - because they are always there, waiting to burst into life and color. "I refuse to believe that." She says softly, the surety in her voice made to match his. But there is no real contention in it, only belief, a powerful belief she wants to share with him even if he does not understand it either. "We live and we make memories that pile up forever until we start all over again but they are never lost or forgotten. They just make themselves more difficult to remember. Once you can do that you can remember them all over again. And Rook, I never forgot you and I never will. You are my friend. My quiet, elusive friend that is like a mirage until he shows up again. My friend who is Bishop's brother but also his own body and mind. You are not like a shadow."

She takes a few steps back to put some space between them, glancing over her shoulder at Ciel who is still lounging beneath the water. There is a softness in her face when she looks to him again. A sadness perhaps. Rook makes her regret things she didn't know she could regret. Mostly, though, she regrets not being able to fight at his side in this lifetime. To see him more. Simple things that are now regrets. She will remember these feelings too. "I just thought you should know. Someday we will meet in a world beyond this one and then you can teach me what a 'castle' is."

"I will look for you, Runner." There is no hesitation, no need to think. She tilts her head as she studies him wordlessly for just a few seconds longer. "And I'll be watching, so that I know when to expect you. I'll be listening for when you need an ear. I'll be waiting until that day, and I'll have the tools ready so we can build a new lifetime together. That I promise you." She shakes her head finally and glances down to her chest where her miniature idols had once been. It is a while before she meets his gaze again but when she does her eyes are wet and once again exhausted. "But now I have to tend to what is left of this one. And you have to start living at all."

The doe takes a cautious step forward. There are good memories of Rook embedded inside of her, but there are also bad ones. Ones of him running too quickly away, ones of him refusing. Just refusing. So she is cautious, but not for long, not for the second step or the third. Finally, she touches her cheek to his one more time. "Remember. I'll be listening."

It's been a pleasure playing with you the few times we could manage, even though I still don't know who you are behind this screen name. Thank you for everything.