As strong as the seas are stormy.</style>
If there was a plausible way to slow time, Hotaru had surely discovered it. It seemed even as she raced towards the handsome brute, he grew ever farther away. Like a rubber band it snapped, correcting the flow of the world as she kicked up snow and turf in her sudden appearance at his side. It felt as if the air could not adequately suck itself into her lungs, leaving her gasping and writhing beneath the pain of her own failure. For a terrifying moment she wondered if she was dreaming, hallucinating. When had he become so much to her? When did his life, his well-being, his mere presence, become something important to her? That was just as terrifying as the idea that she was merely imagining him there. Attachment was not something that had ever served Hotaru well in the past, after all.
But then her words were slamming past her lips as if desperate to get them to his ears, lest he disappear in the split second between one word and the next. His surprise was nearly as deep and warranted as her own, for the heaving of her chest and the crystalline tears in the corners of her eyes betrayed her odd new concern for him. It was not something she appreciated, but he seemed to understand that. His voice was soft, familiar. It wrapped around her like a blanket, giving her time to rest, to breathe, to think. To understand the words that he poured like honey into her ears, comforting.
"Please don't do it again," she begged quietly, as if suffering beneath the weight of her own sudden affection. Love in any form seemed to always turn around and slip its blade into the unsuspecting body of her beliefs. Even familial love, sororal, had done nothing but burn and harm her. Arya was the only one who loved Hotaru in equal amounts, never wavering, never tainted. It was why she could not trust herself with Rhiannon, why she was hesitant to proclaim any sort of feelings for the brindled devil. Was she even capable of it anymore?
"Arya...they chased her home, and slit her throat. She...she should have died-" she choked off into a pathetic squeaking noise, trembling physically with the reminder of the worst day of her entire life. "She should have. We think...we think she might not be able to, that the Gods blessed her with eternal life, but we're not sure. Lena healed her, she's okay now. She's doing well," she assured, aware that the shock would be just as bad for him secondhand as it had been for her to experience her daughter dying in her grasp.
"Mirabella disappeared. I searched everywhere for her after you disappeared, but I haven't found her yet. I'm sorry." It was genuine, one of the few sincere things Hotaru had perhaps ever spoken in her entire life. Was it a life worth living, one built on lies and treachery? Probably not, but Hotaru knew nothing else, was helpless to the fate of any other lifestyle.
They were interrupted momentarily, summarily, but luckily by a face that Hotaru could easily put a name to. One she knew well. "Saffron," she greeted simply, both a welcome and an announcement to the stallion still standing so close before her face, questioning what Hotaru had just answered for him. A flitting smile was all that could be awarded, too sucked into the vortex of her own concealed emotions to strike up any real conversation with the beautiful tigress.
The story of his absence came in time, drawing her attention away from Saffron and back to the brute. There was nothing for Hotaru to say, no other questions to be asked that wouldn't cross a line they'd always had between them. There was a reason they were not mates, after all. "I'm glad you are okay," was all she said, instead. "Arya will be ecstatic to see you." That, she had no doubts in.
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