”Nieque?” she asks, and his ears fall back on his head.

Son of a bitch, he thinks from his prone position, realizing all too late that Semira was too curious to let such a slip go without explanation and not wishing to dash that dream here as well. He had found something like friendship with the dragon child, the first to welcome him into the wood and one of the few faces that he found around himself time and time again when he needed someone the most. Another was back in the Edge, standing along the sea, probably looking confused, the others spread far across Helovia and Loorien, for he did not know where Mirage was or where his other friends at been at the time of his unfortunate display of affection. But this one… this one was here.

And she had heard that name, that horrible, forbidden name, rising from his mouth unbidden from phrases knitted deep into the fabric of his being for it was a part of him, that God and his land and the stories that had died with them both. His father would have been amidst all the horror that befell it had it not been for that damnable God of horses threatening to kill his dragon, his mother would not have discovered the grey king as he left his home, and Dragomir himself would never have come into being.

It was that God’s fault. The one that had made him and all the others that had come before him, leading him into this terrible life where he would pine and desire for all the things he could never have – and for what? To punish him for the sins of his father, his father’s father? He cannot find an answer more solid than the magic he has been given, and that seems quite a cruel joke of a purpose to give life to a man who would long so desperately to feel truly happy as youth had promised him life would be.

And he does not know how to tell Semira who this man is, the invisible dead martyr of a land built on foundations of hate and resentment, falsehoods and distrust; he has seen the way that his own home functions and he cannot imagine a world in which there was so little love or light. In his time within Helovia he had met very few of wicked heart to disparage him against the hope that most of Helovia was good and kind, that all his struggles to adhere to Mirage’s warnings had been valiant and worth the effort; there was peace here, long and colored with laughter, where there had never been so true a peace in Isilme.

He cannot tell her that this God shaped his youth and thus is a part of his heart, either, for this God is bloody and worn and tired where her Goddess shines with benevolence and grace, a mockery of his father’s faith that makes his stomach sour if only that it hurts desperately to know one’s kin have been fools.

He doesn’t even truly know who Nieque is, only that he blames him for everything that is rancid and terrible within this life.

”The Father of all horses,” he answers with a muffled tone, not really wanting to go into this conversation but finding no other option as the silence stretches long and tense between his mind’s rambling and the inquiry posed to him by Semira, ”my childhood God.” And who was his God now, if not Nieque?

It was not the Moon. He admired her beautiful and her power but he felt no bonds with her as he had felt then, in his innocence, towards the lord of all the land dwellers and the mover of mountains; perhaps he is drawn to the Earth, still, as he had been that long ago day at the shrines of the Gods, but that God had shaken the ground beneath him and roared from the heavens, sent the lost boy frightfully galloping back home with nothing to show for it and an emptiness still deeply buried in his soul.

Perhaps he had no God. It made him feel even more desperately alone, even with the princess’ precious warmth pressed against him as it was; no love, no God, nothing but his glass and dull witted dreams…

Unless Semira was still his friend, along with Resplendence and Ranjiri.

It was why he lied, in ways, for he did still believe in Nieque and the tales woven around the creation of the species, and why he did not tell of all the laws that revolved around that bloody totem. He would not tell of them.

She would find that answer somewhere else. He was too ashamed of it all to bare the weight of the thought for even as long as it took to cast it away much less vocalize it to someone he did not wish to upset or have abandon him, still fretful in all his naivety that they would all discard him once they knew the truth of his origins and the dark, dark day that had been born from that name.