The girl is more fragile than she alludes to; through all the smiles and capricious banter, she feels the need to have those smiles returned. Surely, her new found home has provided her with much more confidence than her dark beginnings first supplied her – she is no longer a grasping and greedy creature, a seductive minx of a woman using her curves to pave the way to greatness.

But she still has needs.

The most curious of effects Helovia has had on her is perhaps that of her attitude towards life. Once quite ambitious (dangerously so), she is now satisfied to follow the path laid before her, one which promises to bring treasures and knowledge that could never have been found in the land of her birth. She will always remember (possibly thank) the fires that chased her here; the bleak and ash ridden sky rising above the torrential horizon, glowing ruddy reds and yellows against the strength of nature that swallowed all her memories up in one great and vicious roar of power.

If the fires had not have threatened her life so greatly, perhaps she might have stayed to watch the Cathedral burn into ashes. It was, after all, a mark so saturated in sin and blasphemy that she found it quite hard to think of here in this land of magic. The world in which the Cathedral existed was simple, lack luster in comparison; a world of wolves feeding upon lambs, with no shepherd to save them from the clutches of their terror.

Her family were the wolves, the biggest and baddest of them all. It is hard to believe this while meeting the angel for the first time, but it is true – she is born from a long line of hatred and malevolence, a true princess born to a long line of powerful and devilish rulers.

If you’d ever met her brother, you’d understand. Kahlua is nothing like any of her brothers, to be honest – she is more of her mother, an untainted and pure version of what Krystal Nacht might have been had she followed a different path through life. The queen has passed on her beauty and grace to her daughter, this is undeniably true. A painted form to mimic that of her dam, her heart golden and pure as all good leader’s hearts should be; Krystal had not been truly evil. She had just been old, haggard, jaded by the world of death and dismay that sprawled around her.

Krystal had not been given the flames of freedom as Kahlua had.

It does pain her to think of her family, of the father she never knew (murdered the eve of she and Fuhrer’s birth) and the too ancient to be birthing children queen that had raised them for their first two years. She too had died – murder also, by jealous kin who sought to wear the old woman’s crown, though he (her half sibling, the perpetrator) would have been better off to wait another season for nature to take its course.

The queen had been reaching her 23rd year of life. She was old and bound to wither off the vine soon, anyway – had Kahlua the mind to think of anything, she would find herself quite blessed to have ever been born at all. Goodness knows her twin understands these things.

I suppose that is why he has had very little to do with her, even before they were separated by the disasters that befell their home. In all honesty, while he had never shared his views with his sister, he felt a deep love that was overshadowed only by his desire to see her dead.

Such were the roots of the girl’s life.

She is standing outside the Edge, looking in. The wall that she and her friends have built together stands proud, makes her own heart grow in size to mimic its mass. She thinks of very little other than the fond memories she has of making the thing – delving into herself, pondering her past, looking to the future and genuinely planning, these things were beyond her. All she had was what she could pull up in images in her mind, and this day, she recalled the sun gleaming overhead as Mirage’s dragon form moves whole trees as if they are merely bunnies, the wall appearing section by section before her as the others toiled away to clear the way for the build.

”Kahlua?” comes her name, and the familiar voice tugs her ear back, but she refuses to be made immediately depressed by the sound of Dragomir as she had been back then during the weeks of wall building.

Turning her features to greet him, a blooming and glorious grin upon her face, she is immediately smacked in the face with a ghost. Her lips fall downwards into a frown of shock, jaws numbly grinding at the air as she stares into the deep green eyes… of her sibling.

He is smiling, cool and reposed as he always has, his larger and more muscular frame a spitting image of his fathers build. Littered across his pelt, thousands of speckles and dots can be seen, and on their viewing she remembers a fun game they once played, in which she had attempted to count them all.

It turned out Kahlua couldn’t count very high. But that didn’t matter now, did it?

“Fuhrer?!” she manages to choke out, and the laughter that rumbles deeply from his throat is the same mocking sound that she has missed all these years that they have been apart. Truly, for much of it they were in the same kingdom – but so simple is the girl that she has not even noticed that he dislikes her so deeply, that he comes and goes from her life to use her as a mirror which defines all the ways in which he has not failed.

”No, the ghost of seasons past,” he jibes in her direction, shuffling about on powerful limbs so that he arrives alongside her, their shoulders gently touching. He must admit to himself, standing her in contact with the girl who had shared the womb with him, that there is comfort in her touch.
Kahlua merely stares quite blankly at him for a while, trying to blink the hallucination out of her eyes up until that spotted shoulder brushes against her. That he is really here has just dawned on her – and no wall in the world could contain the eruption of enthusiasm that rises from her as she begins to bob and jiggle in amusement, jostling her brother’s weight with her own as she chattily breaks open the ice. “Oh, Fuhrer! I had thought you had died!” she half sobs in exaltation, though the man is as stalwart and unmoving as he has always been, the partial frown rising to his lips at her usual bubbly nature only driving her enthusiasm all the more, “There was the fire and I was so afraid. I ran, I didn’t think to come find you. I am sorry, I am so very sorry that I just left you like that. I am so very glad that you have come to fi-”

He cuts her off with a short and barking laugh that echoes into the misty wood before them, his lack of fear evident in his stance and the noise that he makes along side her. Unlike his sister, he is clever enough to know when he is somewhere that could potentially be dangerous – but this was obviously her home. The forest and the figure of his sibling both smelled identical, and so he feared very little for repercussions in such a meeting place. ”I am not staying, sister,” he says, looking to her with that oh-so-serious expression that she has never understood or been able to mimic, ”I am coming through looking for my children. I have tracked Lycan and Luna this way. Perhaps, if you have found home here, the others are in this place also.”

She didn’t remember who it was he was talking about. She didn’t care. All that mattered to her was that her brother was back, better than back! He was standing next to her! Bouncily she circled around towards the front of him, looking him square in the eyes – which set him mildly off guard. Where was his coy and flirtatious sister?

This was even worse than the man eater he’d abandoned back in Avalon.

“But brother! You could stay here! I have made lots of friends, and am an important part of the herd beyond this wall here. I built the wall, brother,” she showers out, and he looks long and hard at her before stepping away from the close proximity of her face.

He admires the craftsmanship of the wall before him; it is perhaps the first time he has done anything to appease his much too needy twin.

And he cannot argue that it is beautiful, that her offer is tempting – to remain in the safety of this place, so peaceful and serene. But he has also seen the stranger creatures that wander here – he was relatively sure he’d passed a wolf horse on his way west, and that mere coincidence in combination with the pressing need to find his harem and flock of foals made him turn his gaze back to his sister.

His face is a cold mask again, as he turns to continue walking westward. ”It’s pretty. I’m glad you’ve found a home,” whether he means it or not escapes both the siblings, staring blankly at each other over the rounded curvature of Fuhrer’s bodacious ass, ”but unlike you, I acquired my responsibilities long ago, and I must honor what I have already done.”

He looks down to his hooves, the white tufts that branch off of his ankles dragging along the crisp, autumnal blanket on the earth. Kahlua is left with a beaming smile at his complements, but as with all good things Fuhrer brought to her, it is quickly wiped away and replaced with a few glimmering and truly heart broken tears.

She had finally found him, or he had found her – and he was going to just… leave?!

“But I have missed you!” she almost pleads, following him the few paces he was wandered forward to press her nose hard into the fold of his neck and shoulder; much to her surprise, she feels his weight return the gesture, his own muzzle wrapping about to touch lightly on the opposite side to which she touched. “I have thought of you often, of what befell our kingdom -”

”MY KINGDOM!” he irately shouts at her, his gentle touch removed and replaced with an indignant snarl that hovers beside her, ”you did nothing but try to fuck every big wig in the vicinity. I chose to lead, I have bled for our people. The kingdom that burned down was mine. It was my responsibility to protect them!” Stalking away from her several paces, his black and white lashes viciously behind him, striking his sides hard enough to raise welts to the surface as he spins around savagely to glare down on his sister.

The gentle pout and expulsion of tears that he is confronted with, however, softens his demeanor. By her expression, it is obvious that Kahlua understands her brother’s feelings – though he wouldn’t describe them as such, what Fuhrer was suffering from were feelings of love and loss.

How very wise she is in comparison to Fuhrer, in so many ways. If only Kahlua was smart enough to articulate this, perhaps she and her brother might have been much closer than they actually are.

”I am sorry,” he says gruffly, ”but I cannot stay.”

She nods, the tears steady and silent as they fall down her face. She understands that he cannot come home with her, that their story is once again to branch out in separate directions – but he is alive. That comfort alone is enough for the once weak mare to become strong in the face of this terrible loneliness.

It surprises her brother when she does not argue, that slow nod an image he will cherish within himself for years to come – his sister is growing up, something he was afraid she would never be able to do.

“Go then, and be safe,” mourns the woman already, looking at him with her delicate and compassionate gaze, eyes that burn through his skin and touch down into his inky black heart. He has never been able to remain stone while near her. Never. “Come back to this forest, if you can. I would like to know you.”

He nods, his own emotionless way of saying goodbye, though deep within himself he feels his heart flinch against turning away from the only familiar face he’d seen since heading out on his search for his woman and myriad children.

Kahlua takes note, for once, of the fine lines of anguish that mark her brother’s normally unreadable face, and it settles well in her heart that he will be back, someday – the fine benefits of being one’s twin.

“”