[Flashback] Study of a Horse

[Eris]

20th Day, Summer of 508 A.V.

Eris closed her eyes, inhaling the fresh scent of the forest. Everything else seemed nonessential just now. Killing her last target, leaving Joel, stealing coin from the rich woman’s purse… All those things were part of life – a life she’d left behind when she entered the forest – and Eris was content with that. Maybe in a few hours she’d have to go back and continue on the road alone, without her teacher there to guide her, but at the moment there was nothing in the future. She pulled out a small, leather-bound sketchbook and a pencil from the folds of her jacket. The girl tested the sharp point of the pencil on her finger, just as she might have tested her dagger before setting out on a job. She looked forward to the time when the pencil would have worn down from its contact with the paper, its edges becoming soft and rounded – all the better to shade with.

Eris focused on the horse standing about a hundred steps away from the tree she was perched on. Eris had always preferred to climb a tree when she could, finding comfort in being just a little further from the dangers commonly found on the ground. Now, with her back comfortably leaning against the thick trunk, she examined the horse grazing in the clearing. Rhine perked up her ears, as if sensing Eris’s gaze on her. The woman smiled affectionately, complimenting her Gildling’s alertness in her mind. Eris had never attempted to draw a horse before. Looking at Rhine now made the task of sketching the animal seem more and more daunting.

She squinted, holding the pencil in front of her to approximate the proportions of the horse. The horse’s head seemed to fit into the torso about three and a half times width-wise. The legs were two heads long. She quickly made a few marks on her paper to indicate the top and bottom of her drawing, as well as the overall width.

[Eris]

Her hand darted across the paper as she shaped a rounded triangle for the head and oblong oval for the torso of the horse. Four lines jutted out of the oval to indicate the legs. Rhine was standing in a relatively hard posture to draw, with her head between her front legs, idly chewing on grass. Her tail would occasionally swish in the air, throwing off any rendering of it Eris hoped to make.

Satisfied with the general outline of the horse, Eris began adding detail. She rounded out the head a little and added some dimension to the legs. They were short, but strong, helping Rhine make longs runs without much of a need for rest. At first, Eris had been afraid that Rhine’s short legs would hinder her speed, but it turned out that what the horse lacked in speed, she more than made up for in endurance. As she drew, Eris was careful to give hints at the shape of the joints in the horse’s knees. Even though they were hidden under a layer of touch skin and hair, the round joints and the taut muscle surrounding them still had to be shown.

Finished with the legs for the time being, Eris moved on to the Gildling’s torso. Rhine’s flank was well-defined with muscle, covered by a palomino coat. She seemed to shimmer slightly in the sunlight – a trait which displeased Eris the first time she noticed it. After all, who would want a shiny horse? But she quickly grew used to the mare’s coloring and even grew to appreciate the soft glow when travelling during dark, rainy nights. Now, Eris held her pencil at an angle, using soft dark strokes to create a contrast between the shadows on the horse’s flank and the sunlight shimmering on her.

[Eris]

As she applied layer after layer of shadow on the horse’s side, Eris felt as if she was stroking her flank with her fingers. Just at that moment, she wanted to jump down from the low branch and sit closer to the mare. The horse provided her with a daily comfort that she’s never felt before. Eris wondered if every rider felt this way about their mounts; if every rider had that same bond with their horse that she had with Rhine. But she knew the answer to her question from the many times she’d seen exhausted horses harshly stung by their masters’ whips and tied in stables without so much as a drink of water. Eris saw the irony in her fondness of Rhine – a mercenary with no apparent care for human life, but an emotional attachment to a horse.

There she went again, thinking about the reality of life when all she wanted was to forget it. Eris twirled the pencil in her fingers, inspecting her sketch. The torso was rounded in all the right places, with just enough highlights to get Rhine’s shining coat across. The legs were a different matter. The knees had come out more angular than they need be and the distance between the hoof and the knee were not proportional to the rest of the drawing. Eris carefully smudged the knees with her index finger, rounding them out. The result was only slightly better, but as good as it was going to get for now.

[Eris]

She moved on to sketching Rhine’s head. The horse’s muzzle was obscured by strands of tall, green grass that she was in the process of chewing. Her ears twitched every once in a while, responding to some small noise or other. The head was partially turned away from Eris, so that she could see only one of the large brown eyes. The eyes were the hardest part of the horse to draw, in Eris’s opinion. She had once heard that the eyes were a window into the soul. With most humans that Eris had known was not the case – they knew how to conceal the feelings raging behind their eyes, leaving only a mask of deceit for the observer to see. But in Rhine’s eyes, she saw something more. There was intelligence there and a fiery temper and as much compassion as one could get from a horse. Eris found herself smiling as she made elliptical movements with the pencil, pressing down on the paper at certain points to create the feeling of depth in the eyes.

She fleshed out the rest of the head, adding the grass in Rhine’s mouth as an afterthought. The horse looked alienated from the rest of the world, standing in the middle of a blank page. Eris quickly put down some lines to indicate tree trunks, adding some light curves for the foliage. From each of Rhine’s legs, she extended a dark shadow falling on the earth, grounding the horse in her surroundings.

Holding the sketchbook away from her at arm’s length, she was rather pleased with the result of her work. The drawing was far from perfect, but at least it looked like a horse. And isn’t that what mattered? Eris jumped onto the ground lightly, her feet barely making a sound in the lush grass. Rhine looked up at her as she approached, letting out a disapproving snort at being interrupted from her grazing. Eris clapped the horse on the back affectionately. Holding the bridle loosely in her hand, she urged the horse away from the clearing and onto a dusty well-worn road. Time to get back to the real world.

[Dusk]

XP Award! Eris XP Award Climbing: 1 XP Drawing: 3 XP Philosophy: 1 XP Lore Award Sketching: Animals Additional Note Aw, other people love their horses, too. Just ask the Stablemaster in Syliras. Good job, and it looks like she's getting a nice, well rounded education in the more scholarly arts!