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Don't give me reason to, he says, all unforgiving edges and lean, cold-cut vowels. Nymeria steadies her errant gaze, and casts it back to him, hot red meeting cool. Despite the ground's [metaphorical] unfamiliarity beneath her, she lapses back into old habits; a sharp glance here, a coquette twist of her lips there, and a well-timed lash of her tail. They're easy to hold onto when everything else is different—like the judiciousness of Volterra's unwelcome judgement. He's practically asking for his ass to be handed to him, and certainly Nym's tempted to let the stingy retort leaping to her lips out, but she holds her tongue. Even his conceit did not warrant for the cusses circulating her cranium.
Nothing would be achieved through snapping at him.
Besides, driving a wedge between them would hardly help them accomplish anything. What she really needed to do was plot out the changes of their story arc carefully—it was clear in their time apart and away from Confutatis' influence pieces of themselves had changed, some less subtly than others. Their twinly relationship had become tenacious, almost... dangerous. There were walls where there had been none before, and even though the tension between them was far from truly threatening, it posed a threat to their future together.
Volterra didn't need to be fixed, but he needed a reminder. She was the brains, and he was the brawn.
"Agreed," the yearling says coolly, dipping her head in acquiescence. It's a satisfactory enough conclusion, though she isn't quite fond of what entails. She longs for results, for answers, for her mother's freedom—her patience is thinning.
Away Volt turns, the sand whispering beneath the weight of his colossal hooves. Slowly Nymeria exhales, forcing her temper's last, raw vestiges away—forcing herself to forgive, even if not forget. The sooner they got moving, the better. As her brother steps away, the spider breaks into a snappy trot, settling into a steady pace just a whisker ahead of him. He might think some bullshit about owning each other and protecting her, but she wasn't about to let him lead the way.
@Volterra
Yes I lied, don't think about you all the time
All my switchblade words ain't aim to cut your sweet delusions
