I got distracted looking for the Da Vinci sketch. Mostly by the sketch of Cesare's death in... Victorian or Lincoln-style suits and stovepipe hats. #n,n# Do you have a link, by any chance?
Xel pounds along the beach, less a horse or a man than a note in the wind, a pulse in the rhythm of hooves, barely feeling the sand and surf under him. When the beach comes to the end of the built up areas, he veers high, away from the water. The woods where he once saw Alex walk into a wall of air are sodden, green and dripping and full of quiet: wildness waiting with bated breath. His hooves on the turf squelch, sometimes clicking on a breaking stick or a rock, but the roaring of the wind and the hissing rain make the sounds only natural, no insult to the silence of a forest. It would make a scene of grey, ominous passion, he thinks, in a book.