Ice was control; it is a cold, thin veneer that holds in the true flame of the spirit and keeps its tender glow from prying eyes. It is a wall that only the worthy can melt, and even then, they are provided only a window, a small space through which to view the internal workings of the being. Ice provided Illynx everything she did not have on her own; she was not overly secretive, more the type to chit chat and spill little tidbits of information here and there in her exuberance, or reveal it all through a violent and savage assault upon the unsuspecting. The chilled mental image that she supplemented herself with let her be a queen as she would have one; calm, collected, a voice of reason, though that was not to say her layer of frozen cover hadn’t cracked a time or two. Ice was Illynx’s femininity, the subtle curve of her body and the way she could flutter her lashes just right, the delicate arrangement of each note of her sweet voice to lure the unsuspecting into her claws.

The mare is not a good one. If only Ciceron could see this; he would have left her to her loneliness long ago.

His gentle touch to her shoulder makes her skin tighten and seemingly crawl away from the location he has laid his lips upon. She is not the sort to openly caress others unless she thinks it will earn her something, or if she has managed to feel a sort of kinship with the creature who reaches to stroke her pelt. Of those she has willingly touched, most were contacted with a means of violence, either to teach the skills of the battle or to create another rising peak in the song of her soul as she crushed the unworthy beneath her, and few were those who she loved in enough volume to openly embrace them.

She thinks of Psyche, and her heart burns.

She thinks of Ulrik, and she feels only a partial warming of herself, paired with a violent snarl that blames him for the loss of her friend, though surely less than she blames Deimos.

Still, she does not physically shift away from his kind gesture. She knows that he means well, and no offense; so far, their conversation has revealed much of the silver stag’s character, and she finds that the pair of them make a lion entertaining the beautiful fluttering of a butterfly about it’s head. When would she raise her paw to swat the insect away? When would the colors of his imaginary wings cease to be splendid enough to hold her here?

”No one should have to be alone,” he says, and simultaneously sadness strokes its black brush across her heart with the vengeful roar of her logical brain that rebukes this statement.

I had thought that once, she thinks, I was once young and full of light as you.

She turns her golden eyes to look at him, so solemnly observing her inner pain with the stoicism of a trained knight. Are all her people so wise, so understanding, so long as they do not live on the mountain, in the shadow of their black cloaks?

The world would have all of us be alone, Ciceron. How can I explain this to you? Your heart is nothing but starlight. Let me bask in it for a while longer. Let my heart accept it. Just this once…

He is watching the sea, and she returns her eyes to their focal point of the strange shape that blots the horizon, the statue to the Goddess that she fears will never be hers to love, no matter the depth of her desire. Blooming to the east, the first faint lightening of the sky from indigo to royal blue has begun, and she looks to the fall of the Moon with a sensation that can best be described as hopelessness.

Ciceron leads his words into the question she had asked, sparing her the painful response that was so slow to come to her tongue. Despite her usually dark demeanor, there is something so sweet and genuine about the flower laced stallion, and it reminds her of the filly she had been so long ago. Could this be her, if the others had not abandoned her for the sins of her parents? Could she be the one consoling a lost soul, so coated in abysmal shadow, answering questions that the being in question should already know?

It was odd, how she had been able to assist Psyche at every branch of her Ladyship, and now found herself floundering in the shallows. The real shit hadn’t even hit the fan yet – and she was already failing. If only she knew what wickedness lay around the corner for them all. Maybe she would break Ciceron’s heart, here and now. Lay to rest his illusions on unity and warmth, that life is a beautiful flower that never withers, a service to protect his tender heart from the sharp knives that would assault it in the months to come.

But she only listens. She lets her hard earned knowledge rest within her. Perhaps… she was taught wrong.

Trustworthy, noble, compassionate, each word is a needle that plunges into her already desperate heart. She is none of these things; she could only pretend to be any of them. While she is capable of action, the first on the list of the defined traits, she cannot complete any of the others as she is now.

It feels as if her lungs are deflating, her tongue worked like gum between her molars, it’s flavor no mint but the metallic tang of blood.

"How… how does one become these things?" meekly asks the woman, not truly expecting a valid answer. It wasn’t an easy question. Why couldn’t she be curios as to the hour in which the sun rose in the forth week of winter, or what type of flowers grew along the Cliffside of the Edge? Those were queries which could be answered in absolution, answers which would span across all fields and hold true to whomever beheld them. For all she knew, this leader that Ciceron described would be more fragile than even the precarious situation in which she found herself now; her people were not Ciceron’s, they were not the coven of the Merciful. They were the horned children of the Plague, their only mother supremacy and power, and she had seen each leader fall like dominos after the other.

She wished to be the wall they rested against.

I don’t want to fall, too.

[ OOC: Rambling Illynx rambles. We have written you a novella! hahahaha ]