The collection of tall men grows in number as a third joins their party with far less grace than Dragomir had, the sound of his arrival drawing his ears and eyes toward the tree line as the painted stag plunges through, branches, leaves, and needles protruding from his mass of white hair and eyes bulging with what Dragomir can only describe as disbelief and elation’s odd child. The brief happiness he’d felt that his name was remembered in the mind of the knight fluttered away at the intense welling of emotions that rose within him as the chaotic arrival spoke the truth of his rushed appearance.

It hurts, in some ways, that his family was so far away and that he can almost see himself holding the same reaction towards Adalwulf had they both survived that horrid darkness, but it also makes him smile and feel warmth within himself that they could be reunited where he could not. There is also a question posing itself as a dam before his feelings, as there usually is in his mind; he wonders who this ones mother is, and how it was he had missed the fact that Destrier had had a son.

He had always assumed it has been only the black knight and his emerald, alone as himself. The realization that even such stoic and solemn men as this hardened soldier could find love, even if for the briefest of times, fills him with much hope for himself. He slips into himself as the reunion blooms into fruition, almost shy his denial of the embraces and tenderness before him, pondering the accent that flavor’s Destrier’s words, marking him as a foreigner to this land as he himself was, and while he was surely not from Isilme for he did not have the rolling gait to his tongue as his sire or Ricochet, it was comforting to see a stranger do so well here.

He had feared, ever since that first late morning when Mirage had walked into his life, that Helovia would devour strangers for breakfast and leave their bones to bleach in its Sun.

Returning to the present as the sound of hooves alerts him to the ending of the greeting embrace, he lifts his ears to catch the explanation of the large and odd wounds marring the normally sleek blackness of Destrier’s frame.

Humans? he thinks, no such creature rising to his mind, but he continues to listen despite not knowing precisely what devil this beast was, eyes roving the marks as he continues to explain. Killed in battle, given; had Destrier returned to a land of slave keepers? He searches his memory for any visuals to match what he is hearing, but finds none, and instead looks to the stallion’s son to see if he understands with a soft raising of his brows.

Either way, it sounded unpleasant and had left him in this state.

The next question to meet his ears is one that he is happy to have a mostly good answer for, as in fact most of their number is safe if Destrier is home and Semira has brought word of so many others. He had watched them steadily return as it became clear that Helovia was again at peace, and it filled him with much more faith that few were truly lost forever.

He moves to speak as Resplendence arrives, her small and opalescent figure dancing and weaving with elation at discovering an old friend at the border as shouts and cries mewl from her lips. She’s got crystals lingering in her eyes that don’t fall, he notes, and an ear falls back at the sheer level of exuberance that she displays; it reminds him of Kahlua, a sour thought at this point in the man’s life, and that Resplendence is one of her dear friends has not escaped him. Still, he’s smart enough not to be bitter at her, just towards her bubbles and froth at the moment – girls were all so ridiculous.

Waiting for Destrier to give consolation to her concerns before he speaks, his voice lifts even and deep through the air as he finds the words to explain just where they stood at this point in time. "Mirage and Lace both disappeared into the darkness," he explains, "but Semira brings word of Vikram and Smoke, and many others elsewhere in Loorien, and you are here. Few vanished that have not come home, and no bodies have been found to prove that they will not. It may be Mirage tutors beneath the stars, high in the Moon’s palace, for all we know."

That he had argued the opposite with Semira when he’d led her home slips by him as is apt to do in a young male mind, so deeply changed his opinions on the disappeared now that he saw someone whom he was sure to be dead and gone.

When would his Dragon Queen come walking through the gates?



Dragomir</style>
where light shines, shadows will stretch</style>