I’ll take you on

[[a c i d]]

I've heard it said
That people come into our lives for a reason

// The sun was sinking, drowning in the oncoming night, and its last rays coated the cove and painted it gold. Warm light, more beautiful than anything you could find in a jewelers, flowed over the land and made it a treasure. The light touched everything; everything except the stallion that stood up to his knees in the water. Ripples had long since ceased, so who could tell how long the brute had been standing there? Silky ebon tresses caressed his hocks in the light breeze that created small waves that licked the equine's legs gently. The stag was as black as night, and the oncoming shadows were not a patch on his coat. A single imposing horn rose form his brow, made up of multiple golden spirals. His orbs were a near mirror of the hue; molten gold, they looked like, blazing like twin fires. The dying sunlight made no difference in the beast's jetblack coat, if anything the contrast making it darker. It spoke volumes; the stag, like his coat, was beyond lightening, beyond redemption.

// Golden eyes looked beyond the horizon, beyond the perishing sun. They were shrewd, calculating, even as they were distant. There was an air of knowing, of knowledge, in that gaze, but also a trace of bitterness as though the stag regretted that knowledge. In all things considered, it was the air of something that was past and would not be again. Gone like yesterday, gone like chances past. He would not be what he once was, but if he could not alter the past he would shape the future to his will. There was nothing soft in that gaze, and nothing that said that there ever had been. Nothing kind or compassionate. Just fiery determination, fiery fierceness, and a will. A will to live, a will to die; how can you tell the difference? If you had asked the brute, he would have answered in no uncertain terms that there wasn't one. Where others were born to live, he was born to die.

// The sun had almost sunk now, and despite the oncoming cold the brute did not move. Those wolflike eyes glowed in the darkness, a darkness that sheathed him in its shadows like an old friend. He knew the darkness, knew it well. He had traveled through hell and back but he still did not know it well enough. The stallion waded deeper into the cove, until the cool waters just lapped against his ebony chest. He was no kelpie; he had no fins nor scales nor gills, and didn't need them. The water was a comfort, and comfort was few and far between in this hell of a world.