theattic | PSL: YOU CAN LEAD A HORSE TO WATER...

The closer Maurice gets, the more Envy can tell that there is something Not Right about him. He doesn't smell right, he doesn't really look right...

Maybe he shouldn't go for these two after all. He's not sure he can successfully get that guy. The girl is small enough to drag easily, but she seems too cautious of him. On the other hand...if he doesn't attack but sticks around, it sounds like he might get some of the medical attention that he desperately needs.

That might also mean getting a bridle put back on him by someone else...but they don't know what he is. They wouldn't know to leave it on.

While he tries to decide, he tamely snuffles at the air above Maurice's outstretched hand. He can't lean down and put his nose on it; it's against unbreakable magical rules for him to make first contact with someone.

Envy is super right. However, Maurice continues to be unable to pick up anything weird about this poor banged up pony.

"Maybe he tried to take a drink and fell. Look at his knees, they're awful. Heeeeey, buddy. Oh--oh. There." He gently patted the creature's nose. "See, nobody's gonna hurtcha."

It takes a whole lot of self control for Envy not to just stick Maurice's hand on and bolt for the water in spite of having already decided not to.

He's just so hungry.

But no, he stands there like a very good horse, ears swiveling forward. And...eesh, this guy really isn't normal, his hand is COLD.

For a while Maurice just concentrates on saying soothing things while patting the horse's nose and head and slowly leaning down to look under his chin to see if the bridle has cut him. All the while he's giving good scratches with those deadly claws.

"Well, we don't have anything to lead him with or tie him up...I'm not even sure he can walk. I guess I could just carry him until we find something."

"Carry him?"

Heather's voice is tinged with disbelief.

"How exactly are you doing to do that?"

She steps out from behind Maurice just slightly, eyeing the soggy horse up and down.

"Horses aren't exactly built to be carried. You can't just throw it over your shoulder like a person."

Envy may note that she says nothing about Maurice's ability to actually lift a horse's weight.

Envy just continues to stand there, internally nodding along, until Maurice's words catch up with his brain. Carry--??

He must have been joking.

But then the girl acts like he was serious. Envy's ears slooowly start to go back.

Maybe he should...back up....

"Well I've carried baby cows...they're not very bendy. Um."

He looked back to the dark horse, hand still on his nose. Then it trailed along his jaw and down his neck to his shoulder where Maurice planted it and hoped to give the animal some sense of feeling secure.

"Upsadaisy."

Then he just fucking hoisted the beast up on one shoulder as though he were carrying an overlarge sack of grain.

For a second, Envy is too surprised to actually struggle or make any noise besides a little whuff of air as he's scooped off the ground like a baby goat.

That doesn't last long.

He kicks with one leg and lets out a shriek of a whinny that sounds a little bit more human than one would expect.

Maurice foresaw the kick and managed to shift Envy on his shoulder so that he didn't get cut with a flailing hoof but the noise the animal made nearly made him drop him.

"Aaaahh! He doesn't like it!"

"Holy shit!"

MAURICE IT'S SCREAMING!

"Holy shit!"

She backs WAY UP, because this is NOT the sort of problem she knows how to help with, and she doesn't want to get kicked in the skull.

"Put it down!"

"Aaaaaaah!"

Maurice continued to yell as the kelpie's horrible human yelp finally sharpened into the familiar shrieks he was used to.

"IF I DROP HIM HE'LL RUN AWAY!"

The vampire started stumbling toward the road, teetering left and right as he struggled to hold onto this wailing animal. He needed to get it on its back. Then it would be all over.

"I"m sorry, horsie!"

In a clearly inhuman display of strength (and stupidity) Maurice ducked down and rolled the beast onto the ground before swiftly slipping his arms under him and hefting him like an enormous hoofed baby.

"I can't see over him! Heather, make sounds!"

Not entirely sure what to do, she kind of dances in a wide circle around the vampire and his reluctant equine cargo, wringing her hands.

"What do you mean, make sounds?! Horse sounds?? Maurice, I'm a bird, not a pony!"

Envy lets out a loud, sharp squeal when Maurice flips him over onto his back, uselessly kicking his feet in the air and trying to toss his head. His eyes are rolling in his head.

THIS WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN.

THIS IS THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF WHAT IS SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN.

"No, you birdbrain! Make sounds so I can FOLLOW you!"

Maurice's yell isn't nearly as sharp as it could have been, seeing as his face was muffled by an entire horse.

"I'm making noise! I'm making noise!!"

She walks backwards, still watching Maurice in dismayed disbelief. She can't fucking believe this is happening.

"Where should I be going?!"

"The road! Back toward that old church it had a kinda...fence deal behind it. I think. Woah boy! Calm down!"

There were a lot of churches out in the residential part of Dogtrot and it wasn't uncommon for folks to wind up going to the wrong one on accident multiple Sundays in a row.

Lucky for the two of them, Envy still isn't in very good shape, and just straight up doesn't have the energy to keep up that amount of kicking and screaming.

Not only that, but...he's not so sure he wants to attract a lot of attention. A guy carrying a horse down the street is the kind of thing that gets on the news.

So he finally starts quieting down, sides heaving as he tries to hold his head up and keep an eye on where they're going. The whites of his eyes are showing a whole lot.

Heather keeps walking backwards, trying to ignore the uncomfortable twinges in her gut that seeing the horse's terrified, rolling eyes brings on.

Their eyes had all been covered in blinkers, but they'd probably been doing the same thing.

"Just-- keep following my voice. And try not to DROP the poor thing!"

"Got it! You're doin' great, 'Thur! And don't you worry. I aint gonna drop 'em! I've got supernatural--"

His boot hit a washed out spot. He stumbled forward and nearly pitched the poor frightened Kelpie all over the road. Luckily he saved himself at the last second.

"Okay this isn't working. Hang on, fellah!"

Maurice shifted Envy once again and with a loud groan, managed to heft the watery beast above his head as through he were a construction worker carrying a heavy beam.

"Holy shit that's better. Okay. Once we find somewhere to put 'em we can get somethin' to eat...oh no! Your dick! We forgot your dick back at the playground."

"--it's okay, Maurice. I can get a new dick somewhere else. That sounded awful but I'm rolling with it."

Her tone of forced calm is largely to make up for the fact that she let out a small shriek when Maurice pitched forward like that. If she hadn't been busy internalizing all her freaking out, she probably would have hollered HAHA U WANNA EAT MY DICK?? GROSS DUDE or something else along those lines.

Whoever these two idiots Envy stumbled into are, he's clearly in the best of company.

~LATER~

Footsteps and a rustling of paper bags announce Heather's return to the vacant lot that they'd temporarily stopped in while they figured out what the heck to do with their find. The miserable horse's reins are tied to the pole of what was probably a street sign at some point, and the smaller of the two kelpie wranglers had gone off to find food while the Muscle of the Group (tm) fought through shitty cell phone reception to get in touch with somebody.

"Did you get hold of your mom yet?" Heather asks as she steps into the lot with her arms full of multiple fast food bags, all of them radiating mouth-watering aromas of grease and salt.

If Envy had been in any shape to run when his feet were finally back on the ground, he'd have taken off like a shot, and damn the chance of medical attention. But he's not, and he's not sure he could outrun Maurice anyway...and there's the matter of the bridle. Even ripped and partway hanging off, he can't get it off the rest of the way, or pull the reins free from the pole.

He's stuck with these two extremely questionable individuals, whether he likes it or not.

(He doesn't.)

His head lifts right up when Heather comes back and he smells the meat inside those bags. He's never even seen fast food before, but even cooked meat smells so good right now. He extends his neck towards her as she gets closer, snuffling.

Maurice had been hanging by the post, leaning against it and feeling like a right and proper cowpoke if he should say so himself. He looked up when Heather reappeared and shook his head.

"Naw, reception out here is shit. We might end up havin' to use the house phone. If I can't get through here in a while, I'll fly out to the trailer. I thought for sure they'd put up a new cell tower by now."

Maurice, too, was a bloodthirsty monster and reacted similarly to the presence of the Bumpers bags. He reached out to take the one nearest him and reached inside to pull out a fistful of piping hot french fries. They went RIGHT INTO HIS MOUTH, searing grease and all because he was a badass.

After a few moments of contemplative chewing, he pulled out a single fry and offered it to Envy--by way of accidentally poking it into one of his nostrils.

"Here y'go, buddy. You could use a pick-me-up."

Horses could eat potatoes, right? He knew they liked salt.

The girl plonks down on an abandoned stoop, plopping the bags down next to her. She wastes no time in grabbing a burger out of one of them and unwrapping it-- unleashing an explosion of smells.

Hot grilled beef, salty bacon, onions and pickles, that magic mixture of ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise...

It's enough to set anyone's mouth watering, even if you aren't a meat-eating swamp horse on the verge of starvation.

Heather chomps down with relish, not bothering to swallow more than half a mouthful before speaking up. Table manners with this pair are seemingly nonexistent.

"Man, no offense're anything, but Texas sucks."

Envy snorts and pulls his head back, offended, but...then he goes ahead and plucks the fry out of Maurice's fingers anyway, devouring it in an instant. Even if it's barely anything at all to a horse, and even if to a kelpie in particular it's no more nutritious than a jellybean, he is a horse. And horses do love salt. But that's when the girl opens that hamburger wrapper.

Oh.

Oh.

He needs whatever the hell that is and he needs it right this very second. But he's slow and cautious as he swings his head around as though he's only doing a normal horse thing and not steadily moving his face towards the bags. And then he strikes, shoving his nose into one and biting into a hamburger, wrapper and all. Fuck yes this is the best thing he's tasted in a long time.

Good luck getting him out of the bag before everything in it is gone.

"Yeeeeeeah. A little bit," Maurice admitted. Oh, well, they'd get this sorted eventually. He felt he'd miss the big critter once they'd sent him on his way. When Envy takes the fry, Maurice bursts into giddy laughter. "Check this horse, man! He knows what's good!"

And no sooner had those words left his mouth did Envy shove his nose right into the bag.

The vampire stares at this with steadily widening eyes. Neither of his mom's horses did that! This horse was metal as fuck.

"DUDE!"

"Wh-- HEY!"

Heather's first instinct is to grab the bag and yank it away, but man Envy's really got his face in there good, and the paper tears almost immediately, scattering wrapped burgers and a small waterfall of fries all over the asphalt.

Still with her own bitten-into burger in the other hand, Heather just kind of... stares at the remains of the one Envy managed to tear into. That's. Definitely not what she would expect a horse to do.

Slowly, she leans down to one-handedly unwrap another burger, and then holds it out to the scrawny horse experimentally.

Envy doesn't pay the other two any attention, he is entirely too focused on how fucking delicious this burger is. It only takes him a few bites to polish it off, along with another mouthful of the fries that spilled all over the ground.

He hears that wrapper crinkling though, and his ears swivel right towards it before his head follows. He can't even really be bothered that this is...the opposite of normal horse behavior. He's so hungry and this is so good.

He stretches his neck right out to take a bite out of the offered burger. HELL YES.

Maurice blinks rapidly as the scene unfolds in front of him. Slowly the corners of his mouth creep upwards until he's beaming a steak-knife grin. He starts to laugh again.

"Wo-hoah! Heather! Heather, check out this horse!" He squatted down and scooped up a handful of fries, patting them into a neat bundle before holding them out for Envy the way he used to feed his parents' horses clumps of hay through the fence. "Here, boy! Shit. We gotta--we gotta name this dude Hannibal or something! Look at 'em go!"

"Holy shit. He LOVES it!"

She lets the very hungry horse have the rest of it out of her hand and immediately reaches for another. Before Envy knows it, he's got TWO people offering him big handfuls of food.

"Do you still have your phone out? Take some pictures!"

"Yeah! Yeah, just a sec!"

Once Envy had taken the fistful of fries, Maurice wiped his hands off on his jeans and fumbled his phone out to snap a few pictures of the obsidian grazing entity that they'd literally dragged from the gutters.

"I'm sending one to Meranda!"

Heather's already unwrapping a third burger, all hunger forgotten in the face of this new discovery. This hamburger-eating horse is too exciting, satiating their own monstrous appetites can wait.

"Get a picture with me in it!"

"Okay! Get close to 'em!"

Maurice backed up several paces so that the two of them were backlit by the street lights.

"Got it! Oh....oh, hey, Meranda's awake. She texted me back." He thumbed over to the app to read it. "She says not to bring it home. She can't tell me what to do."

Technically she was his landlord so she could but. Still.

Edited 2016-05-12 20:27 (UTC)

Envy is having the best time he's had in a long time, just devouring everything that's put even remotely close to his face. Not only is the food delicious, but he's getting it handed to him! No effort required at all!

He's just whickering happily to himself as he chews on the latest mouthful, and except for flicking his ears at Heather when she stands next to him for the picture, he doesn't even mind. He does turn his head to nose at her hands to ask for more, though. His nose is...weirdly wet and slightly sticky, but that's an automatic response to the idea of eating. No way is he going to try and drag either of these two off now.

"Well, she might have a point. Where would you guys even keep a horse?"

She responds to the nosing by automatically reaching for another burger (they're running low at this point, it's the second-to-last one) and starting to unwrap it even as she looks over at Maurice.

"I mean, you could tie him up in the yard I guess, but that freaky rooster of yours would probably come out and peck his ankles open. ... Do horses even have ankles? ... You know what I mean."

The wet stickiness of Envy's nose goes un-noted. For all her weird hangups, Heather hasn't ever really had much interaction with real bona fide horses before. Maybe their noses are SUPPOSED to be wet.

"Bloodspur's is my good baby boy! He'd leave 'em alone if I told 'em to." Maurice retorted with a huff and reached out to pat Envy's neck again. "I don't need a horse, I just wanna give Meranda a hard time. She started leavin' those passive-agressive stickynotes on the milk carton again."

Maurice crouched down so that he could be closer to the horse's head. "You wanna live at our house, buddy? Huh? You could have Meranda's room and she can live in the carport with Bloodspur!"

PSL: YOU CAN LEAD A HORSE TO WATER...

ACTUALLY NO. HE LEADS YOU TO WATER. AND THEN DROWNS YOU.

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