Яikyn

“Hello, uh…”

An ear flickers to the sound as his body swiftly approaches, the lack luster wording easily ignored. Its what she says next that makes him actually take the time to get a better look at her.

“I think you used to know my brother, Adelric?”

Zunden, as if pulled from his thoughts, stood framed in the snow, her dark tipped legs buried in white and her twin horns now those of an adult, not as he had seen her last (though one is broken, which makes him wonder as to why only briefly, and not long enough to ask – horns could be snapped, he would not curse his by talking of the befouled fates of others); the name which fell from her lips, his own forgotten, not remembered, made his heart spasm in a strange way he’d come to associate with loss, and the worry that it would be as if he never existed here at all.

He hadn’t paid the figure much mind when he’d first noticed her rushing through the valley with a limp to her step, hadn’t given the shouting that ushered from her lips a second thought; he truly had just kept running, intent on ignoring her, and so it was with some measure of surprise that he actually looked at her to find that she was familiar to him, though the sound of her voice surely had not been.

Hauling himself to a stop in a spray of sand and chilly dampness, the blackened russet youth stood staring as vapidly at the roan mare, staggered by the sudden appearance of a childhood acquaintance.

She’s asking him he’s seen him around, with a sort of worry to her voice that makes Rikyn’s ears twitch atop his head in sadness, wishing he had even more than he already did in all of his loneliness.

Sure, his dad was around – but it wasn’t the same as sharing a true companionship with a guy your own age, and the former prince had spent many hours since returning wondering what he had done to piss fate off so much that it had stolen all his friends and suitable companions away while he was gone.

"No," he answers honestly, his tenor voice rich and elegant, thankful to hear the arrival of another set of hooves and turning his golden eyes away from the sad, gold embellished green eyes of Adelric’s twin.

He finds himself smiling at the surly tone of the woman, just a little slip of a smirk that makes his ears pull forward again from where they had fallen back under Zunden’s sad expression. The tone of her voice does not match the sweet grace of the woman what so ever, the threat held it its pitch lost on the smallness of her frame, how very pretty she was.

She lightens quickly enough, however, introducing herself as Enna (a soft name, he thinks, delicate as she) and even inquiring as to Zunden’s leg, which Rikyn only now has the decency to notice.

Good question, he thinks, feeling very little shame over having given zero cares before and perhaps only half of a single care now.

"Rikyn," he says with his golden eyes cast in Enna’s direction, meaning himself, hoping she gathers as much and doesn’t think he’s answering her question to Adelric’s sister with nonsense, turning to the roan girl after a short pause, "what did happen to your leg, Zunden?"

@Zunden

in every heart a hole