Abashed, his awkward smile is as swift as the blood which rushes to his skin, hidden, blessedly, by the rich chocolate and ebony tones of his coat. She’s right, of course – he hadn’t been off the main road looking for nature’s treasures, and part of his embarrassment isn’t due to her seeing through his thinly veiled truths. That she knows him well enough to deduce as much, that she has bothered to get to know him beyond just his name and appearance, to make him a friend rather than just an acquaintance, is something that settles warm and fuzzy through his veins.

It’s not a feeling he’s used to. It makes his ears fall aside as the onslaught of tingly sensations runs riot through him, pale eyes glittering with a secret delight that, if asked, he would be likely unable to place words to.

Thankfully, she carries on, her voice sweet as the smell of the flowers on the crisp spring breeze, lilting in a question that makes him smile at the bright humor lacing each note, and that he does indeed know of other places that, perhaps, she has not seen. His time alone is ample, his wandering often unbroken by the presence of others, and he has earned from his lack of conversations and close companionships a vast amount of his own moments. These moments have strung together into a woven tapestry of fate, the stallion driven by the same silent drum line and thread which tugs hooves down foreign, and yet very familiar, paths, that had drawn his mother to Isilme all that time ago. That selfsame thread which had guided her through her life had passed on to her child, and with it had been shared a deep belief in faith, in fate, that nothing happened that was without purpose, merit, or truth.

He had found this place all that while ago so that he might see Ranjiri now, framed in the serene beauty of the secluded grove, and so that he could create whatever memories they had given life to upon their arrival here. Before then he had met Mirage, so that he might learn to love the winged damsel alongside him, rather than disdain her for things outside of her control.

"A few," he answers absently, thinking of just that many images in a moment, smiling down at her with a quiet joy that is deep and thrumming.

He’s still looking at the black and gold as she pivots about to admire the grove and the flowers, her enthusiasm radiating off of her figure in almost palpable waves; as he has been doing since they’d reunited in the Threshold, the stallion basks in her easily emotions, the warmth of her happiness as pleasant as the salty seas of his childhood.

Forever, she says; it rolls in a slow, soft echo through his mind. A sigh, alive with the hum of contentment, is her answer, at first.

Wouldn’t that be wonderful? To stay here, denying the inevitable death of the flowers with the frost, hiding from the darkness which seems to coil and curl behind each turning page of time? To stay, with her, to cling to the dishonest longing in his heart that, if they willed it to be so, the forward march of the river would slow, would still, leaving them to eddy like petals carried out of the current and into motionless shallows.

"If that is what you wish," he says, not knowing why he promises her so many things, or why he so fully believes that he will keep them; he has never been the sort to view himself as being so steadfast, having denied he held any of the admirable traits which existed in his sire.

Dragomir was not the sort of man who could be compared to his sire, King of his people, one whose name fell from the mouths of Gods, one who was pious and capable of so much more than the painted boy could ever dream, at least if one was to ask the former Glazier. The approval of his sire was something he endlessly reached for, even now, so many years and miles of distance between them – a reach that never seemed long enough, which grasped hopelessly at emptiness. That he was indeed a son of the Steadfast was a truth that yet evaded him, the mirror though which he viewed himself still hazed by the warped belief that he was his mother’s son, as Adalwulf had said so often.

It had been meant in love, of course, in reference to his dam’s sensitive, wandering heart, and thoughtful presence, though Dragomir had not taken it that way.

Such are his thoughts as Ranjiri’s closeness draws him back into reality, the vibrant pink of the newest flower taking its place alongside the yellow. Finding that he can only smile awkwardly as he returns his gaze from his pouches, he lowers his own lips to the grasses below, large hooves carrying him forward with slow strides as he gathers various flowers from those which grow here.

When he has enough, he figures he will show her how to make a chain of them, if she does not already know.

"Be careful not to take too many from the same plant," he warns, remembering some of what he had learned from Resplendence, Alysanne, and the other herbalists in the Edge and sharing, "or it won’t come back next year."

[ OOC: lol novel ]

Dragomir</style>
I hope tomorrow you find better things.</style>