There was a gray horse grazing in way of the exit. Nymeria hesitated, ears flicking forwards and back, uncertainty painted in the gentle curve to her ears and lilt to her skull. He looked—familiar, almost—with that strange mottled dappling and the embers bleeding from dark nostrils and bright eyes, and the flames dripping down from the ends of his mane and tail. Yet with his exponentially different characteristics, she would've thought herself to remember him; and for the life of her, she could not place that face.

Lilómiel chirped, parchment sails singing in the hot, humid air, circling above his bonded idly. Cautiously, Nymeria gropes for a handhold in his head, and swings up and into his skull, settling into place among the nooks and crannies of his cranium. Here, enveloped in his emotion, she is overwhelmingly him: her wings beat, her muscles work to keep her in flight, her mouth tastes like blood and festering decay. It was unsettling, even connected as they were, to feel their mind squeeze and press against each other, the enormity of their thoughts chafing against one another.

Perhaps it could even be described as unpleasant, to be this close to all Lil's raw emotion, the tangy bitterness of his cruelty and ferocity.

Cruelty. Her eyelids drift shut; her lips (Lilómiel's lips) twist in curdled hypocrisy. Here she was, nestled in the foundations of her bonded's brain, and all she could think of was the flaws they shared. Their emotions—their beings—ran both ways; he and her were one and the same, no matter their slight variances in approaching a problem. They had been together too long, and from the very cusp of her youth. And they were to be together as long as she lived. It was Nymeria, after all, who corroded and corrupted and controlled his livelihood, she who burned away his individual thought and branded him to be hers, hers, hers.

Do not complain for having what many seek.

Nymeria opened her eyes and fell back into her equine body's familiar shape and size, leaving behind Lilómiel's decidedly different carapace. Her gaze flits upwards to him; he snorts, and banks away, leaving a smoky trail behind him. A low sigh filters through her nares, and she steps up and out, step quickening as she shifts her path towards the grazing stranger. It felt pointless, this—she wasn't, by any stretch of imagination, the type to strike up conversation with individuals unknown. And here she was anyways, a-wandering towards awkwardness and tedium, urged on only by the spurs of Lilómiel's approval.

Nymeria & Lilómiel

Caught in the fire, watch it burn,
Ash to ash, now it’s our turn,
Take their kingdom down and smash it to pieces