yakalskovich | Fic: Chariots (for woelfle, whose birthday it is)

Chariots

When you are young, you like to go fast. A fast horse beneath you, and your friend at your side racing you would be all the happiness you asked of the world. Messala had missed the simplicity of such sheer, simple feeling for years now while more sophisticated joys and problems and considerations kept hold of his mind and his heart and his senses.

When you are young, you throw your body uninhibitedly at the world, jumping half the staircase at a time with enthusiasm, fighting your friend all-out amid gales of laughter, running while shouting at the top of the voice. Later, he had learned to refine his enjoyments and only smile mildly at the most excruciating pleasures imaginable.

When Messala had been young, there had been two horses drawing the chariot. It was a simple hunting chariot, designed to take you and your friend and your gear out to where the game was. It was a hunting chariot where you would stand and throw javelins at deer while your friend held on to the reins and turned the chariot nimbly with the escaping herd. As Judah's family had bred the horses, they were fast and strong, and loved their master with almost the same devotion as Messala himself.

Often, they had gone hunting, and raced the chariot through the open desert for leagues on end, for the sheer exhilaration of the speed, the thundering hooves, the huge cloud of dust they trailed, the feeling of the taut, spare body of his friend in his arms as he was holding on while they were careening wildly along dusty desert roads.

In hindsight, Messala couldn't say what had been the more perfect moment: Judah clinging to him while he raced the horses at their top speed, risking life and limb; or Judah clinging to him in the shadow of a few shrubs beside a lonely watering hole, the horses peacefully grazing nearby, oblivious of their masters' antics.

But now they were grown, chariots had teams of four horses, and they had become the tool of a hatred that Messala's frustrated desire had turned into so suddenly, so unexpectedly and painfully, the tool of Judah's revenge instead of his unthinking generosity. So they had had to have a chariot each instead of one together, which finally made for eight horses. Two horses had been love, four horses were a challenge, eight horses had proved Messala's undoing.

So now he had to hold on to reins that had no horses at all on the other end, waiting for Judah - his only real love, his nemesis, his greatest shame - to arrive, trailing death after him.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Thanks for the offer, but I've already made dozens myself.
:-D
But, as there is Gamil, shall we trade?

Nah, I wouldn't know what to do with them. This account is free anyway, hence only three icons, which are quite sufficient for all practical purposes. RPage justifies more icons, that's why the Captain's account is a paid one.

Oh, I meant screen caps. Totally aware of your selfless approach to icons. ;-)

Fic: Chariots (for woelfle, whose birthday it is)

I've got other icons too, but well...

Re: I've got other icons too, but well...

Re: I've got other icons too, but well...