Ep. 29- The Burden of the Rider Pain

A wise person once wrote the first rule to all of life.

Suffering exists.

A succinct summary of all one could expect, endure and hope for.

Suffering exists.

There’s many types of suffering. There’s the pain in your gut that never goes away. The tooth that aches in warning of the future dentist bill. The broken bone. The weeping cut.

But there’s other types of suffering.

There’s loss.

There’s absence.

There’s longing.

There’s enough of all three to fill an entire new Earth’s oceans. It’s the pain we don’t see. It’s the knock we don’t hear. It’s the loss we don’t remember.

There’s a hungry world machine gnawing at our ankles, chipping away at the flesh, quietly devouring the muscles that help us stand.

One day we will not be able to stand and we will not remember what we lost.

ext. hovel stoop night

The Pale Horse, still in human form, leans against the door frame of the hovel. The stoop is cast in a soft orange of yet another lantern. The forest surrounding the hovel is alive with the creaks and croaks of a thriving night. Soft purple auras of arcana energy gently waft from the surrounding fauna creating a soft blanket of lavender vibe.

The Pale Horse, with crossed arms, closes his coal black eyes and sighs.

ext. battlefield day flashback

The Pale Horse opens his eyes, no longer coal black but fiery orange, the blacks now white as spent charcoal.

Surrounding the Horse’s now equine form is a battlefield. Numerous corpses clad in blue and yellow armor surround him. With each step his hooves dip into the gore-soaked earth, staining the white hairs of his legs.

A ring of steel. A wet thud of flesh striking the ground. The muted roll of a golden crown that twirls and stops at the hooves of the Pale Horse, who also stops.

Reins fall limp past Pale Horse’s face. Wisps of a black robe, clinking of iron armor and the dense thump of two booted feet impacting the blood-slicked earth.

An armored glove rests on the head of the Pale Horse, the glove itself as black as obsidian with a sheen to match. The glove’s owner then leads forward- they wear a matching set of jet black plate armor, offset by a flowing black robe and hood drawn low to obscure the face, save a feminine chin and thin lips that evade the shadow of the cloak.

These very same lips draw near to the Pale Horse’s alert ears. The lips move without words, twisting meeting out of their shape until the message is complete. The lips then withdraw, as does the glove.

Before the Cloaked Figure and the Pale Horse , caked in mud and fluid, is a woman. She is clad in finery and a crown of white flowers. Before her, facedown in the mud, is the battered corpse of a king clad in stained yellow armor.

The queen of flowers looks up to the dark robed figure.

QUEEN OF FLOWERS
(quietly)
Please.

The Dark robed figure juts out an arm and a scythe takes form, a small sonic boom emitting from the summoning that blows the queen’s flowers from her head.

The Pale Horse watches the inevitable execution. As the blood of the unfortunate splatters across his snout, white flowers tumble on the breeze, a few becoming caught in his tangled mane.