As strong as the seas are stormy.</style>
Even surprising rain cannot keep a fire smoldering for long, and as Tingal let his lips form an exaggerated pout, Hotaru felt the disbelief well inside like a tidal wave. How dare he?! The flames inside her burst forth in a display of anger well-hidden in both her dam and sire, passed on to her to boil inside like a reminder that she is still imperfect and always will be. "Considering I have been without it for seasons, I doubt you can possibly dare to speak to me in such a way!" Fierceness snaps in her heterochromatic gaze, ears falling to halfmast, regally lifting her head from the shocked and submissive position it had been in. She will not be talked down to, or intimidated, merely because Tingal had gone off on some crackpot spiritual journey and had returned with some actual balls. His frown is nothing to her as she jerks away, but the snapping of her lyrics seem to crumble whatever false bravado he held. It only angers her more, that he would fake and act his way through their reunion. Had it all been a lie?
Instead of redeeming himself he stutters and fumbles over his words and her ears fall fully, the pale cloud of her mane concealing the pink aurals easily. She hisses, wounded that he dare call her by such comfortable terms. "Don't call me that! You abandoned me! Sorry changes nothing. I watched people get eaten, I watched them wither away and turn into awful mutilated creatures! I watched their faces melt, and their organs show, and heard words they would never have spoken come from their tongues!" It is a sibilant hiss, a viper ready to strike, daring him to make one wrong move. Anger is better, easier to manage, than distress. So she falls to it automatically. It is her shield, one Tingal has never managed to bypass before.
Snorting, she hides the hurt in her eyes with a narrowed gaze. "And how do I know you won't lie again? I was fine on my own while you were gone, I learned to live and care for myself. Because of you being gone. Well, now I don't need anyone." She whirls around, a soft click of pale hooves on stone, and stalks away. It's likely he'll follow her, tail whipping against her hocks in a fury as she tries to escape him. Let him follow. She has nothing more to say to him. Hotaru had lost all trust in those around her, and the one she'd placed the most in had abandoned her, and broken the rest of the innocence nested in her heart.
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