She listens to her friend, most of the energy she’d had left when she came into the conversation lost to the length of her prior words. Her tears were wet and damp on her face, an ugly sensation that made her flesh tighten uncomfortably, and she was sure she didn’t look very elegant at this particular moment. The embrace on her flesh is welcomed rather than rebuked, though she still finds the comfort in it odd and mildly unnerving as she leans into the gentle caress; that she has panicked so deeply in the absence of her friend and proven how she feels of the woman doesn’t mean that she’s ready to let the world see them in such close contact.

They will think her weak, for needing this other mortal as deeply as she does.

Why she can’t just say this to Psyche is beyond her understanding. All she knows is that the words lodge in her throat; the closest she can come to is her vague description of the emptiness of the world the black mare had left behind.

She still does not agree entirely with her oldest companion, but she does sympathize with her in ways. The tales of their lives had woven together over the years, but she remembers what little the woman has shared with her like any true friend would. Nodding in correspondence with a life spent pleasing others, she finds herself aligned on the same path now; perhaps Psyche has lessons yet to teach her.

For one, she needed to be the Queen they needed, not this sobbing wreck crashing against the brittle and bleached bones of the life she had always wanted. Life wasn’t a toy; one couldn’t make it do as they pleased. That she had never accepted this is perhaps the deepest of her troubles, even while dealing with Psyche.

Was that why she was so upset? She sought to control the path that life chose to move on? Wasn’t she far too old and too wise to be foolishly redirecting a river far more powerful than she is?

"I will not allow them to harm you," she says in quick rebuttal of Psyche’s fears that she would become a member of the hunted; as well as she may, she will keep them away from her dearest friend, though it sours her heart to know that it is possible they will view the woman as an enemy now.

It is her turn to nuzzle softly upon her dearest, whatever comfort the touch could bring to the mare despite the broiling of her own soul.

Why had she come here to find the missing Empress was beginning to become lost on her. All of her troubles seemed so small in comparison to the train wreck that was the portrait Psyche had begun to paint for her, the image of her pristine Aurora Basin stained by acts of disloyalty and hatred. Even the Plague was being dissolved before her eyes; the words her friend shared imparted a feeling that the woman was well and done with that frame of her life.

"I ask you for nothing other than to remain you," she says, quite subdued, "forgive me for my waspish tongue. I feel as if I am falling into pieces and becoming lost on the wind. I believe you feel the same way, and so I will press you no more." She draws away from her ebony companion, her heart aching in her chest and her head pounding in threat of a headache to end all others.

"Just promise me you won’t ever leave me again like that," she asks of Psyche quite suddenly, her golden eyes returning to the woman’s face with a gleaming and vulnerable brilliance, "promise me… you will remain mine, even if the others can no longer have you."