My name is always strange on the lips of others, but this one meets the syllables with a boldness that I have found uncommon outside of the stiff barriers of my home. It is not perfect, but it will do; it rolls and ripples from his lips with some of the same fluidity with which I myself or my siblings might say it.

I smile, softly, in praise. I am not the sort to overwhelm others with presents for small signs of intelligence.

I expect that of us all.

He thankfully removes his eyes from me for a moment, so I may swallow my breath slowly and deeply in the absence of his pressure. It is not that I entirely mind; a part of me still longs for romance and sweet princes, palaces garbed in crystal garland and filled with the sound of prancing hooves, but I am truly too old for such fur lined dreams. I cannot love him; this is truly just a game of how long I might appease him in his game of batting lashes and sumptuously curved bodies.

As soon as our gazes touch again, however, a small and furry storm bursts from his neck and assaults his ears, her shrill screams echoing about the room and forcing Quilyan’s ears down and his head to savagely shaking. From the appearance, this is his bonded – but as she sails rather gracelessly through the air still shrieking and barely manages to grasp his mane before tumbling to the floor, I am forced to raise a brow.

However annoying her assault might have been for him, it served a purpose, and to toss her so rudely from his crown is an insult to their connection. Is she not his sister, of deeper blood? Is she not supposed to rely upon him for his strength?

As the little fluffy thing scampers back into her nest on his wither, I also cannot help but notice that she looks hatefully not at the man who almost concussed her on the stone floor, but me.

Oh, dear Quilyan, how short a life you would have lived in Elysia – or long, depending on how you choose to play the game.

I have yet to see if your companion is a wrench tossed into your well oiled gears. If not for her, would you be elusive and clever enough to travel between women, never long enough and with such tact as to grow ill favored or too desirous?

And who is your woman, the keeper of your leads, the one for whom your soul splinter has voiced her obvious concern for?

Have you soiled her body with sons?

I listen to him apologize for the miniature monkey, nodding in acceptance of his lie. She is not restless; it is the thing dangling between his legs which causes the disturbance around here. Perhaps they too, are restless within their souls, but the only reason his pet has assaulted him is because she can know what he thinks.

It is a fun game, truly; I will pretend to be the pawn a little longer.

My laughter is chiming and sweet, albeit false, in response to his second and just as lacquered line on beauty, allowing a delicately dished face to tilt humorously to twinkle broad, blue eyes in the direction of both man and squalling creature (the monkey was not amused by the continuance of our game, it would seem). "Why do I feel as if you would find me so sweet as to make the belly ache even whilst covered in excrement?" I coyly ask, glancing most playfully to the small animal nestled among the umber strands of his mane.

I hope she will soon understand that I am not a foolish filly, so easily charmed by her sweet companion. I am merely a lonely woman, cast adrift, and the cadence of the game allows me to slip away from the dark bowels of my soul for a little while.

"Either way, I long for the Heavens the moment my hooves touch the earth," my smile is woeful and teasing, so piteous on such a charming face as my own; it will hide well enough the truth of who I am, for the moment is tender and covered in the silver allure of desire, even if it is false for us both, "to not see her above us seems an unnecessary punishment, even for those as wicked as ourselves."

A voice breaks my attentions on the stag, so rudely slicing into the midst of our words and with no pertinence to the glory of the sky. I twist my head about to glare at her wingless frame some distance from us, aggravation roiling through my heart and spreading all to quickly through my blood. But as I lay eyes upon that which she calls “beautiful” and discover a writing I have never seen before, curiosity helps me quell the outrage of her interruption to my first moment of quiet serenity since arriving to this damnable kingdom.

"Words, of some sort," I reply sharply, the gentleness of my voice in the conversation prior lost to the edge of the venom, though they are still not unkindly. Perhaps they sound learned, or lofty and proud; I do not know, nor do I care.

She is only a unicorn.

"I have seen nothing of them in the libraries of my homeland," I conclude after breaking from Quilyan’s side to better look upon the symbols etched into the stone, finding their shape simplistic and similar to the most ancient forms of writing that we held in the libraries of Elysia. Looking to the painted stag to see if he has followed, I test my theories that he, too, is of a place similar to which I was grown.

"Hieroglyphs – picture based story telling, wouldn’t you say, Sir Quilyan?"