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It had been long since the fragile girl had seen the lands of her birthright… and perhaps she preferred it that way. After all, what blessed life had awaited her here? There was nothing tying her to Helovia, nothing to ensure a certain bond to the blank faces she no longer knew. The emptiness that filled her heart had long ago faded until it was cast away with a vagabond breeze. No family, no friends, and no life had awaited her return, but loneliness and failure had driven her from the comforts of solitude and back into the eager arms of her fragmented memories. She recalled a broken family, a home in what she once knew as the World’s Edge, but nothing remained. No feeling and no intent lie at her core… she did not return in search of lost purpose because her purpose was clear. She was not broken- only changed.
The badger-faced child welcomed herself gracefully back into Helovia, obviously still at ease with the wintry landscape that she’d once grown accustomed to as a filly. She had grown –that much was sure- into her body, mirroring both mother and father, though surpassing each in youth and beauty. Even if she was not gifted with the full height of her sire, she rivaled him not only in stature but in build as well. Like her dam, her Warmblood heritage had given her agility and simple speed while her Clydesdale father had given her strength and the commanding presence of a Queen. Wide, slate colored hooves gathered the muddy sludge of the Threshold pass as she moved slowly but surely into the thick of the barren forest. It stood tall above her like a skeletal display, each thick trunk reaching toward the sky with slender arms yet unable to grasp the sun.
The sights and the smells were not foreign to her but her senses seemed to overpower her desire to remain aloof and unassuming. She did not yearn for recognition and instead sought secrecy in order to conceal her unexpected homecoming. This had not been her wish nor a convenience. In fact, she owed this pleasure to the ghostly canine at her feet. Together they were a vision of elusive splendor, a pair so in sync with one another that one might second guess their bodily separation. Romul had been insistent to return to Helovia when his beloved companion had been threatened in the night by wandering monstrosities. He, alone, could not protect her from the numerous dangers that the wild held at its will in spite of his need to please the one and only constant in his devout life. A predator by instinct, the wolf no longer a mere pup by age, padded along elegantly behind the mare’s easy gait. Each step in tune with the next, the pair moved toward the heart of the claiming grounds with a seemingly natural sense of direction.
One would try to guess their origin or perhaps their arrogance should they assume them new to Helovia, which was Essetia’s hope... Better to be an arrogant mare than an easily recalled memory, a figment of imagination to those who had lost her. She did not want to be found and was intent of making that request one that would be granted. As the pair paused in a small clearing- small enough for Essetia and Romul and perhaps two more, three if they sought to push the situation- Essetia turned to face Romul with a grimace upon her thick lips. I’m scared. Her thoughts carried easily to the canine standing just beneath her shoulder now. With determined amber eyes, her bonded rested a knowing gaze upon the anxious mare while pressing a reassuring shoulder to her knee. I’m here. His voice was a godsend to the girl and though her nerves still quivered beneath the solidity of her bay coat, she felt calmer. Slowly, the youth reached a nervous muzzle to her beloved so that he could rest his snout against her in order to console her. They were not so much a bonded pair that one or the other claimed dominance, no, Romul and Essetia lived in accordance to one another. They made decisions as a unit and they planned with the other to consider, always.
They had grown alongside one another, learned about the world together, and now they would live within a land that had all but been forgotten to them. Romul, being the true gentleman that his bonded knew him to be, stepped forward in order to give her a grave and undying look of trust. Protected. You… are protected. As if in a show of determination, the wolf bared his pearly white fangs in a grin-like fashion. This humored the mare as she turned away to face the vastness of the Threshold. She was home… but was this truly a home to her anymore? | |
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