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Old 01-12-2008, 09:34 AM   #4
Firefoot
Illusionary Holbytla
 
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Join Date: Dec 2003
Posts: 7,646
Firefoot has been trapped in the Barrow!
It had been a long ride, though not necessarily in terms of distance. It had been long because the whole time Léof had had little else to do except think. Occasionally the silence had been broken by conversation, in which he gladly took part, but the rest of the time he was left to think.

He had tried not to think much, these last two weeks. He had kept himself busy, sometimes with inane tasks sheerly for the sake of doing something. Nights were the worst; his sleep was plagued by dark dreams, dreams of burning, of horses shrieking, of him unable to help – sometimes forcibly restrained by Thornden or some faceless entity, sometimes mired to the ground for no apparent reason, sometimes unable to find the horses. The horses always died. And Javan – Javan was normally somewhere in the background, standing mutely or, worse yet, laughing manically and triumphantly crying, “Try to teach me now! Try to boss me around now!” Most nights he would wake, then close his eyes again only to fall back into the same dream. It helped, he had found, to sleep outside near the horses. After that first night in Eodwine’s own room, it had occurred to him to sleep out in the Hall with the footmen, but he had been uncomfortable there and usually rose in the small hours of the morning anyway to assure himself that the horses were alright, all except Herefola.

Scarburg had represented a new hope to him, a chance to start over without having that burned down stable leaving a gaping hole in the scenery every time he went out to the paddock to tend the horses. As the ruin of Scarburg came into sight, his hope fell.

From one burned stable to the next – except now, it wouldn’t be any sort of priority; the main hall would have to be rebuilt first, he imagined. As the procession stopped, he turned to Thornden, near whom he was riding, and commented weakly, “At least Eodwine will be able to build the new hold up just as he wishes – I doubt much will be salvageable from that wreck.”
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