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Happy Scorpio Races day to all who celebrate!

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More art for my “The Scorpio Races” Fanart project :) these were just gone check/ mood exploration pieces, but there were super fun to make!!

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the ocean says shhhhh, shhhhhh

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The Scorpio Races

Day 4, Chapter 6

October 4, 2023

Year 11

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Sand, And Screaming

Lily

The next morning is almost identical to the festival - all of Thisby seems to have turned up on the beach. Even people who I’ve never seen during the racing season have turned up, and there are capaill dancing around everywhere.

I’m holding just Cosmo’s bridle, and he is shivering with excitement.

I’ve kept his mane unbraided, but the bells are still on his fetlocks. I’ll untie them shortly (with Kaya’s help) and then, alongside a few dozen other jockeys, signal him to cry out to the sea.

I hope I can get him to do it. I pray I can get him to stop.

Keep reading

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PIAFF (ELDON X PIPI) - Polish Arabian Stallion

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excerpt from part 2 of The Ocean Keep Our Brave 🌸

SEAN

It’s storming and there’s a girl on the beach.

There’s a girl on the beach, and she is so still that I think she doesn’t notice the rain or sand or the sea. She reminds me of our old stories of the women who calved from cliffs when the harvest was too small to keep anyone’s stomach full. The women in our stories used to give themselves over to the sea, exchanging themselves for good fishing and safety from the horses that swam past the harbor light. From the sea to the sea.

I know who she is and I know what she means to me. I don’t know what she wants me to call her. I don’t know that she considers me a friend.

I say, “Puck.” It sounds like the thinnest sheet of paper, the kind you could tear by breathing on it wrong.

She turns, and I see that I’ve misremembered her in my notebooks. Her eyes and mouth are both larger and fiercer than I have drawn all these months. Puck crosses her arms as I approach her, and all I am thinking about is how to keep her from running into the sea.

“Sean Kendrick,” she says. I can’t tell if saying my full name means anything to her. It holds me in place like magic.

I’m waiting for her to say something else when she raises her eyebrows in the way Dory Maud does sometimes when she’s unwilling to say anything else. It’s a neat trick.

I say, “Kate Connolly,” and she scrunches her nose. I add, “Puck Connolly,” and she hugs herself tighter, almost like she doesn’t know what to do with me, here, saying both of her names like this.

“You drew me,” she says now. “You wrote ‘Kate.’ Why?”

“I don’t know what you’d have me be to you.”

It is the simplest way I can think to say it. She looks back out to sea. Her hair ribbon flutters against her cheek, and she shoves it back like she wants to say something but can’t find the words for it. My heart jolts when I realize it’s my ribbon, and that the edges are frayed, and that she must have been wearing it often for it to have frayed so much. It brushes her nose. She tucks it away behind her ear.

“What would you have me be?” she asks. Her voice melts into the surf and I see that she has taken a fair number of steps into the water. It swirls around her knees.

I wipe rainwater from my forehead. “I don’t know if that’s the question.”

“Then I don’t know that I want you to be anything to me,” she says, and the wind and the rain blow her hair into face. She takes another step into the ocean.

I say, “Kate,”  but she shakes her head.

“Don’t. You left and said nothing to anyone for months and then sent me a drawing of myself, and now you’re here looking at me like you want me to forgive you, and just — don’t. I don’t know how to do that yet. You can’t expect me to pretend everything’s fine after a thing like that.”

I say, “Puck,” and she looks at me, and now I see how her bottom lip trembles just so slightly when she wants to cry but can’t afford to let herself. I don’t know how to tell her that it‘s easier to hide that impulse as the years go by. No one tells you the aftereffects of living through the Games, the blood you can never truly wash off. No one tells you the Games never end.

I can’t tell her this now when she’s halfway gone into the water. The sea bites my ankles, but she doesn’t move away when I approach. Somewhere past the breakers I think I hear a horse whinny. She turns like she wants to swim to the noise.

“Stay here with me,” I ask her. Puck gives no sign that she’s heard me and something fundamental looks as though it’s splintering against her face. “Don’t — don’t wash away.”

I ask her again when she comes closer to me, shaking like she’s going to fly away if someone doesn’t anchor her. I ask again with my arms around her, rubbing her back to keep her warm. I whisper into her ear as I guide us back to shore. She comes out of the water like she’s moments from going back in.

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Maroesjka Lavigne

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QH x Draft cross mare

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DERROCHE, pure spanish horse, by Juliane Meyer.

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Nayyirah Waheed, from salt.

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L'Appaloosa face de cheval typiquement américain typical american horse face

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Knabstruppers Wernersdorf

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Biche et Mouche

Rudolf Koller