The voice is familiar, but to the wench’s ears alone – the griffon is impassive, her ice eyes cold as the color they shine as the turn about with the aureate gaze of the gilded one, the spark of interest which flashes through the veins of the unicorn a foreign hum in the heart of her bonded, who looks over to the stranger because he is not really a stranger at all. Very little else causes the cat creatures head to turn, and so it is with some surprise that Kyst lays eyes upon the splendid snow pelted beast which prowls alongside the strange silver male.

Together, both bird and woman feel their souls bask in the grace of the two, Illynx of the silver stag (as she had the first night she’d met him, his shining pelt and natural good looks hard to ignore, though certainly less… poignant than they had been that evening in the snow, in the dark), and Kyst the primal power of his bonded. While the griffon is little impressed by the prettiness of the tiger’s unicorn, she is certainly awed by the strength that the pale cat holds in each movement of her figure – though she smugly praises her own flight, pitying her ground cursed cousin.

The golden one only pities the stallion his company, that he has never lived in the snow among the true Kings and Queens of Loorien, though she does not feel this way until he grows closer, and she can smell the stench of green lands upon him still (though there is no smell of Midas, she thinks, the name bittersweet) – her griffon’s commiseration is almost immediate, as it is for anything that cannot fly as she can.

Ciceron, she says, her voice sweet as maple candies in the Tallsun heat, sticky, warm, laced with a smile that is delightfully dulcet, a mask worn over the bleak soul within that curdles and poisons all it touches, I have been well, good sir. How have you fared, since we last met?

She hopes well enough – as she does for any she meets wearing a crown, though she will unlikely bother to worry about him much at all until she happens upon him again.

She’s got too many selfish things to fret over without the addition of some beautiful man or another.

The sudden thundering arrival of another makes the griffon take to the air with several hard beats of her wings, her feline hind legs tucked up towards her belly and her tail angling downwards. Tight against her head, her ears are little tips as Tangere slides into view, her hooves clumsily clunking against the roots, leaves and dirt flying erratically, the golden mare herself having turned to look upon whoever was charging her with some measure of defensive surprise.

Holy shit! says the silver and white woman, dissolving Illynx’s tension into a smile and gentle laughter, which in part delights in the younger mare’s joy to see her – and in mockery of her companion, whose feline ego fizzles angrily to have been deceived as she floats back down into her customary position, banded tail writhing with hostility.

That the two similarly colored unicorns in her company know one another intrigues the wench as to why, but the thoughts are short lived as the healer turns about in a flurry of interest and pleasantries. At first, it’s all very flattering, and then…

”…to recruit you…”

Kyst’s laughter peals like razor lined bells in Illynx’s head, an audible chitter and clacking of her beak sounding aloud in the forest as the GildedBlade raises her head so suddenly, her golden eyes broadening. An unusual crack in her finely created guise, a sure sign she had been away too long – if the fact that she was considered claimable wasn’t a good enough indication.

’Told you. Nobody,’ chortles the griffon, the feathers along her neck rising in utter glee at her companion’s inner raging.

The unicorn smoothes the lines out of her mask; she even manages to smile, a smile that manages to put a false light of amusement in her golden gaze (or maybe its because she imagines goring the woman through her chest).

Who is us, darling? she asks, a dangerous interest delicately framed in friendly curiosity (who is wearing my crown), I fear we have only just arrived, and no very little of the condition of the realms.

She looks to Ciceron, again scenting the absence of the painted Czar among the smells of fertile river lands, wondering just how many towers might have toppled while she wandered Loorien, unable to guess just how very many truly had.

@Ciceron @Tangere