Fiore

Bay Splash Roan Blanket with Spots. His coat is a pale russet brown, with a faded white spotted blanket that reaches his shoulders. He has a blaze that tapers up to his forehead, along with occasional spotting over his face. He has four white socks. His eyes are blue and fringed with golden lashes. His mane and tail are also dark, greying gold. He is on the smaller end of his breed's average size, at only 14hh. He will gain only a couple more inches of height as he grows. Fiore is sleek, but not especially fit-looking - he still possesses the roundness and slightly disproportionate limbs that comes with being young, but will even out into a good-looking stallion with age. His head is long and straight, with no stop where his brow begins. Bad nutrition as a young foal has left his mane and tail short, giving him a coltish look. click

Fiore has always been described as a sweet, yet somewhat strange boy. He is friendly and cheerful to a fault, always having a spare moment to spend on another equine, and will talk until he is told to be quiet. He is nearly impossible to offend and takes everything in his stride, accepting the words of others as truth because he has no reason to doubt them. He is somewhat naive - having been protected from the outside world for most of his life, but it has left him eager to explore and learn, and his childish curiosity will, no doubt, fade with age. Fiore loves attention, and will do anything to earn it from others. Mostly this results in harmless, if humorous, antics, though he has, on occasion, done some dangerous things in order to impress the other youngsters in his herd. While he is highly social and loves company, Fiore can be just as happy by himself, often not even noticing he is alone until another creature joins him in that loneliness. He would benefit from a guardian during these reckless years, but struggles to find anybody tolerant enough of his irritating optimism. He will become more realistic as he matures, but will never lose his good attitude and friendly disposition.

He was born to a lower-class female in a herd that was strongly divided by the status of its inhabitants: the low class equines, who were the mixed-breeds or the sickly, and the high-class horses, who were purebred, or possessed great skill or beauty. His mother was an aging mare who joined the herd after falling pregnant, and after birthing him in the spring, grew weaker until she passed only a month later. Luckily, the herd was full of nursing mothers, and Fiore was adopted by a large, upper-class mare, who named him Fiore: a female name, but she thought him beautiful as a filly at that age, and nobody questioned her choice. Fiore grew in the safety of the upper-class horses, playing with the pretty young foals and talking to the powerful adults. He knew little of the world, as he was never permitted to leave the herd, and was unaware that the mare who nursed him was not his dam by blood. After his first birthday, the lower class, now quite large, grey weary of the disparity between the herd's members. They fought the upper classes, and many were injured. The herd scattered - Fiore following the instructions of his mother to simply run as fast as he could in any direction, but he could see none of his friends, and so ran alone. He eventually found himself on a beach, having run until his lungs burned and his legs shook. The sand was white and beautiful, and the area seemed to be reserved for mares to birth their young. It was safe, and the mares didn't seem to mind Fiore wandering the beach and the surrounding areas - he was only young and small, and posed no risk to them or their young. As the weeks passed, he ventured further away from the beach with each journey, and continues to explore the lands to this day.

The woods were, by far, Thames' least favourite place to travel through. Not for any particular reason - he didn't feel closed-in by the trees or stifled by the darkness as others were; no, Thames hated them because they were so utterly boring. Even as he ambled down the narrow track between the spruces, he found himself cursing whatever made him think it was a good idea to head this way: there was nothing to see besides wood and plants, no creatures to chase, no equines to torment. Heaving a sigh, Thames entertained the idea of breaking into a gallop, watching the trees whip by as he ran, but the path was winding and uneven, and he wasn't willing to risk snapping a leg for the sake of entertainment. This route was, however, the shortest one, and he thought he could probably find his destination a few hours earlier than he would if he hadn't traveled this way. Nevertheless, he picked up his pace, daring a slow canter that crushed plants underfoot and kicked up clouds of golden dust.

Eventually, the stallion could glimpse light through the distant branches, and knew that his journey through the woods was coming to an end. He let himself slow, sides heaving and drawing his ribs into relief. Thames prided himself on his appearance - he knew how beautiful he was, and intended to flaunt it whenever possible. Lean muscle lay beneath a dark umber coat, glistening with vitality. His parents had raced before his birth, and he shared their long-legged stride and fine appearance. Breaking into the sunlight was a relief, and Thames raised his head to the sky, breathing in the warm air for a moment, allowing himself the small pleasure of a lungful of air that wasn't tainted by moss and musk. The spring was welcome, bringing with it sweet young grasses and soft earth, tendered by the melting snow. The winter hadn't been a particular struggle for the stallion; though the days and nights had been cold, it had never been difficult to find a mare - or, more rarely, stallion - who was willing to share their body-heat for a night. Without a herd, Thames more often found himself relying on the kindness of strangers; something he loathed. It wasn't that he was unfriendly, not entirely. Just that he required a kind of companionship that most others couldn't offer, and he had to resort to kind words and gentle actions in order to appeal to those who were so different from himself. He longed, someday, to find somebody like him, somebody with whom he could ravage the lands, torment the inhabitants. Alas, it seemed that no such creature existed for Thames, and he had to settle for the niceties that came with the average horse in these lands.

Peering around for a moment, allowing his eyes to adjust to the light, Thames noted the expanses of grass and forage, the wide river that bordered the fields. Thames supposed he could spend most of the day grazing - claim back what little weight the winter had taken, but the water looked so pure and inviting that he found himself, quite suddenly, parched. Striding to the waterside, he waded in until the water was up to his knees and dropped his head to drink from its surface. His dark eyes reflected the crystal waters, making them swim with brightness; he glanced about as he drank, saw a figure slightly upstream - black splashed with patches of white. Lifting his head, he considered himself for a moment; really he couldn't rationalize stopping to converse with a stranger, but it had been so long since he'd taken the time to know another equine; who knew, maybe this stallion could be a friend. A smile creeping onto his lips, he headed into the deeper waters, toward the other stallion. He came to pause a few meters away, and peered at him, head low and relaxed.

"A wonderful day, isn't it." He said, blinking languidly, his voice smooth. "It's not common to see another solitary equine on a spring day," That was not a lie - most stallions were heading to the breeding lands in the hopes of catching a female. Thames had no such interest. "So I assume you must be a traveler? Tired from your roaming and in need of rest?" He continued, a hint of humor rising in his voice; these lands seemed to act as a magnet for rogue equines. Thames himself had come here when he was four years old, and had seen newcomers arrive and disperse with the seasons. Some stayed, but most moved on. Thames looked away, back to the riverbank, where wild rabbits had arrived to graze on the plants in his absence. "I am Thames, if you wish to know me. If you do not, then feel free to take your leave."