It's a late October night, the air brisk and chilly with winter on its way, and Mad Sweeney is absolutely bolloxed.
He's been spending more and more of his time with mankind lately. Even these days, his influence is already waning and petering out, a low flame only kept lit by the likes of Essie MacGowan and her assiduous rituals. So he's been rubbing elbows with mortal men, stepping foot further into their towns, like a hungry fox tiptoeing closer to civilisation to steal what sustenance it can. He drinks and laughs and sings and kills a few hours in the taverns with them, and it's a feeble kind of warmth, but it keeps him warm regardless.
Until it's late enough that the pub spits him back out, and he's stumbling drunkenly down the street on his way back out to the woods, wherever the púca go when they're not needed. Until the drumbeat pounding of hooves on packed earth makes him pause in the middle of the road.
It should be nothing. A midnight rider. Someone coming home late to town, surely.
But there's a way that each hoofbeat sounds, feels, like the tolling of a bell, like each impact drives right into your bones, and when the horse bellows a neigh that sounds more like a scream, then he knows exactly what it is. The Gan Ceann, the Dullahan. A distant cousin of his, of sorts, going out and about their foreboding business, and Mad Sweeney wants absolutely fucking nothing to do with it.
Which is how he winds up flinging himself panickedly into a hedgerow, damp with pre-dawn mist soaking his trousers and hair, tangled up in the leaves. He waits until the thundering hoofbeats go roaring by; he waits, and waits, then waits a little longer for good measure. He dozes off at one point, bleary from the whiskey and beer. When he wakes up again he's still half-drunk and trying to extricate himself from the hedge, twigs and thorns catching on his clothing. He's swearing up a storm when there's quieter footsteps down the road behind him, a dark-haired woman in riding clothes walking and leading a larger-than-average black horse.
The dawn sun is just cropping over the distant hills, and the Dullahan's ride should be over and the danger past, so Sweeney doesn't quite notice at first.
"Ah, fuck, gimme a hand, will you?" he grumbles, not quite looking at the arrival yet, mostly trying to free himself without losing a boot to the foliage. The tall redhead looks rumpled and muddy and, well, like he just spent the night passed out in a hedgerow.
for @dicheannadh; 1860s ireland.
It's a late October night, the air brisk and chilly with winter on its way, and Mad Sweeney is absolutely bolloxed.
He's been spending more and more of his time with mankind lately. Even these days, his influence is already waning and petering out, a low flame only kept lit by the likes of Essie MacGowan and her assiduous rituals. So he's been rubbing elbows with mortal men, stepping foot further into their towns, like a hungry fox tiptoeing closer to civilisation to steal what sustenance it can. He drinks and laughs and sings and kills a few hours in the taverns with them, and it's a feeble kind of warmth, but it keeps him warm regardless.
Until it's late enough that the pub spits him back out, and he's stumbling drunkenly down the street on his way back out to the woods, wherever the púca go when they're not needed. Until the drumbeat pounding of hooves on packed earth makes him pause in the middle of the road.
It should be nothing. A midnight rider. Someone coming home late to town, surely.
But there's a way that each hoofbeat sounds, feels, like the tolling of a bell, like each impact drives right into your bones, and when the horse bellows a neigh that sounds more like a scream, then he knows exactly what it is. The Gan Ceann, the Dullahan. A distant cousin of his, of sorts, going out and about their foreboding business, and Mad Sweeney wants absolutely fucking nothing to do with it.
Which is how he winds up flinging himself panickedly into a hedgerow, damp with pre-dawn mist soaking his trousers and hair, tangled up in the leaves. He waits until the thundering hoofbeats go roaring by; he waits, and waits, then waits a little longer for good measure. He dozes off at one point, bleary from the whiskey and beer. When he wakes up again he's still half-drunk and trying to extricate himself from the hedge, twigs and thorns catching on his clothing. He's swearing up a storm when there's quieter footsteps down the road behind him, a dark-haired woman in riding clothes walking and leading a larger-than-average black horse.
The dawn sun is just cropping over the distant hills, and the Dullahan's ride should be over and the danger past, so Sweeney doesn't quite notice at first.
"Ah, fuck, gimme a hand, will you?" he grumbles, not quite looking at the arrival yet, mostly trying to free himself without losing a boot to the foliage. The tall redhead looks rumpled and muddy and, well, like he just spent the night passed out in a hedgerow.