Chilled winds push at long raven locks, strands aflutter in the breeze, like inky smoke, tendrils of black fire from her nape. Along the strands lie clay beads, a beautiful October orange, like pumpkins and autumn leaves. A testimony to her first love, the one she would never forget so long as she was able, and the one she missed so direly it still hurt some days, awakening from dreams of him. They were far, far rarer now. Lakota wasn't sure how she felt about that. Meeting with Ktulu outside of the borders...Lakota still wasn't sure how she felt about that either. It seemed that, these days, she really was just groping blindly for answers. Most of the time, they were the wrong ones. Life had changed her, and quite a lot at that. When she'd first stepped over the boundaries of the peninsula of Helovia, her heart had been as frigid and unyielding as the blizzard that had heralded her arrival. Cold had pervaded every word, and her care for the lives and feelings of others was nonexistent. Now...now, she didn't know who or what she was on the inside. It was as if someone had slowly been slipping a reactive chemical in her body, and it was finally starting to take hold on her. Lakota was terrified of it, she hated change, she just wanted to be safe and unharmed in her icy shell. It was so much easier to hide away behind it, to stop the beating of her heart by encasing it in ice and snow.
Shivering from the brisk wind, she is torn from her similar thoughts, the coil of unease and fear like winding snakes inside her belly. It made her queasy. Ao whines at her side, but he cannot pierce through the miasma that clouds her thoughts, and he is helpless. All he can offer is the comfort of his fur brushing against her slender legs, ink on snow. Leaves fall around them in a whirlwind of color, like some sort of movie as they fall from their branches to swirl around the pair as if enchanted to follow them around and herald their presence with a mystic gust of crisp earthen sprouts. Clay beads clink together softly in Lakota's ears, ruffled by the wind, and she flicks her forelock out of the way, ivory mark over her eye revealed where normally it was concealed by the raven locks. Breathing deep, she sighed softly, a cloud of mist enveloping velvet nostrils in the chill air as her lungs celebrated over the fresh vapors. It smelled of earth, crisp sunshine on dewy grass, and home.
Speaking of, her brow tightened in alertness as a figure appeared upon the knoll she was traversing, pale coat all she could discern from the distance she was at. Quickening her pace to a springy trot true to her Morgan heritage, she let her aurals fall to half-mast, unsure who this person was with how they stood like a statue of stone at their borders. Only when she neared did recognition hit, the sight of familiar grey markings like opening her eyes to sunlight, warm and sincere. Alleo. Her heart still convulsed every time her gaze fell on him anew, for she intimately remembered how she had lost him, how broken she had been without him, how worried she had been without him at her side...they were two pieces meant to fit together, her love for him far deeper than she had yet to experience with anyone. Alleo was her world. She would fight the Gods themselves and die trying to overcome them if it meant securing him safety on the mortal plane. There was nothing the lithe Poisoner would not do for her brother.
She does not slow, and instead races to meet him, worries pushed to the back of her mind momentarily as her joy takes over her. There is nobody to watch her, judge her, and she is like a filly once more as she lifts her knees and dances over to him playfully, violet eyes bright and long plume flicking to and fro excitedly. "Brother!" she trills happily, a name so familiar on her tongue, yet one so ill-used. Since she had grown older, it was normally Leo by which she called him, but the familiar title comforted her in this hurricane of emotion she had achieved reprieve from. Were horses able to purr, she would be doing so, ebony kisser reaching out to nudge and prod at his muscled neck like a youngling wanting attention. But he was not to be moved by her excitement, and her innocent joy fell from her face, akin to the way horror steals emotions from another's visage, when she recognized the somber look upon his brow.
All movement stills.
Quietly, sadly, she murmurs. "You are troubled, Leo. Speak to me." Barely a murmur, but they are so close, it is meant only for his ears. 'Brother' has vanished, for the term she holds so close to heart she is reluctant to bring into a conversation sure to be serious and trying. It is as if the title is a precious babe to be physically protected at all costs, even from the one who bears it, whom she had named by it only moments before. Together they face each other, two still figures on a grassy hill, wind sweeping up their hair and leaves of every shade of fire like a cocoon of protection. This moment is for them alone, intrusions were unwelcome, and Aodaun was sent along to patrol the rest of the borders in solitude. She could not abandon all duties for her brother until she knew the severity of the situation.
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