[ OOC: Sorry Psilo! You are being skipped ~ I still love ya though. ;D ]

She nods to the knight of flowers, agreeing in full that such a realm is endlessly changing; had that not been the cause of the silver which laces her chocolate pelt now, the riotous course of time, the burden of the crown that made it her task to wrestle with the fluctuations of its course. For this, she is glad she has left, that she is a nobody as her bird mocks (though, the blow is returned when Kyst hears herself thought of as a mere bird). His laughter is almost missed as she thinks of time and its winding, and noticed only in passing; she’s spent too much time around those who laugh for no reason or reasons which aren’t really funny at all (like when she’d pranced about the legs of a fallen pegasus mare, her giggles like wicked bells) to think much of chuckling, anyway.

Still they come, faces drawn from her past, and as she turns to greet the newest to arrive among their gathering she finds a smile again on her lips, the slight of Tangere’s eased by the memories she has shared with this one.

Sialia, a passing woman of Mauja’s, who had become who knows what other kind of woman in the length of absence that ran between them; the golden one had last seen her on an isle that floated of magical accord, and before that (if her memories were not faded, rusted) during the birth of her child, Glacia. That the names of both the mare and her child return so easily is a good omen to the gilded bitch – a sign that she had not been gone so long as to begin forgetting things she shouldn’t.

A distinct lack of emotional bonds to most she encounters makes the recollection of names a thing which is fleeting, a file system that, if unused for any duration of time, slowly fades away until all she knows is that she knows a person – not their name, or even in what light she should recall them in. That a wench who lives her life such as she must remember all she has known is a truth she knows, and cannot forget, and yet, she also does not see why she should remember what to call someone inconsequential, either.

Not that there are no emotions tied to Sialia – but they are mostly the callous, selfish ones which rule the golden eyed woman and the creature that roosts along her back, nothing like friendship, or love.

That Ciceron is as distraught with the notion of such an Empress of Realms as herself being recruited is vaguely comforting, in the way a distant firelight on a cold, cold evening is. She looks away from Sialia for but a moment before she again returns her eyes to the black and blue minx, the smile of familiarity still clinging to her lips.

But what she says…

Kyst is laughing again, as she always laughs at the rise of distress in her bonded, wisely taking to the air and drifting away to high boughs before the froth and broil can lash out at her.

Thranduil?!

He would trade the mountain for a bit of gold! What idiot made him Lord –

No.

The idiot.

Deimos, the Reaper of Despondency, the Black Knight of Ineptitude.

Her face remains smooth, mask like. Inside the thoughts churn like blinding bolts of white light across storm cloud skies, inside she wants to scream, to hurl her own lightning through the forest to watch the world burn. She had been gone just long enough for her homeland to fall into the rule of the only being more selfish than herself.

That had been her game the entire time with the golden man, hadn’t it? To see who won who in the end?

Whatever emotional palpitations besiege her, the golden one manages to find some semblance of passivity in the mention of her son – his name causing the most odd of flittering to pulse through her core, warm and floating, the ache of having abandoned him (but not truly accepting that she had) raging through her already raging heart.

Love. Love fills her, and it is foreign, and bright.

Glistening, her golden eyes widen without bidding, her ears lift in interest; even her hooves carry her forward a step in her eagerness to again behold that which she and Ulrik had created together. A soldier, just as she! To know that he is well!

She longs to ask of his father, if the bronze emblazoned metal smith is well, what he thinks of their Son, but even the thought of appearing so weak makes her soul curdle back and away, her throat swallowing fast the words that had almost tumbled outwards.

Then let us go, my sisters, she says, looking towards Tangere, as well, the day is long yet.

And so she moves as if to leave, pausing in the last moment to look over at Ciceron, her smile warm and graceful upon her lips, horn tip extended for a light clack with the silver of his own, the gentleman who had been as steadfast a friend (if she had anyone she labeled such a thing aside from her Dark Empress) to her as any she had known in her life – though he perhaps did not know the truth of her ebony heart, either.

Our meeting has been brief, old friend, she says as she withdraws, though we should meet again, I’m sure. I have rarely been hard to find.


@Sialia @Ciceron @Tangere
The mentions, they are everywhere.