I hear my name.

I hear my name even over the thunder of my hooves across the grassy earth, the heat of the sun beating down on my back like hammers of hot that swelter and raise sweat to my skin in rivers.

I hear it and I heart it twice, from two voices, and I’m not sure if it’s the sound of my name, that I have heard it over the noise of my chaotic galloping, or that I know the voices as if they are my own that makes me stop so suddenly that I almost tumble hoof over head into the thistles, golden eyes searching wildly for the figures that, honestly, just can’t be there.

But they are.

She is there, golden and beautiful, a beacon of love in a world that I had stopped looking for her in, and that they are together, my mother and father, that fate has bound us together (even without the shade of the mountains to unite our paths), it is almost too much for me to bare.

So I stand and watch them, for a while, letting my heart take in the visage slowly, its erratic pace (made more frantic by the sight of them), slowly thudding into the rhythm of acceptance.

In an emotional fog I find the strength and will to join their gathering, droplets of sweat splattering off the curvature of my figure to quickly evaporate in the heat. Having not seen my mother in over a year, and my sire in almost a full season, there is a certain level of eagerness that rattles about mindlessly in my consciousness, but also a trepidation, a worry that I will not be welcome in this particular discussion and ousted.

It would not be the first time; children are often shooed away.

But this time… I don’t know. I think something in me might just break if she turns around and tells me to go away like she hadn’t just walked out of my life, causing my own to flip upside down and inside out.

So when I get close enough that she hears my hooves in the earth, and she turns around and smiles, a smile that melts away this awful look of everything negative one can feel hidden behind a layer of nothingness when she sees me, I can’t help but find myself grinning, my step that much quicker, golden hooves flashing high in an eager and childish trot.

Rikyn! mother calls, and as if I have not been prancing about as a man these last few months, I rush to her like I always have.

I see her as she rushes me and the other children to the caverns, as she leaps into the fray with the wolves; I hear her voice calming me over the din of cave rattling thunder. I find myself pouring into her warmth, her protection, as I had so many times, my dark neck embracing her, holding her to my chest as I marvel at how much taller I am now than I was the last time I was so close to her.

I miss that she and father are having a bit of a serious discussion – I didn’t hear it, anyway, not in my tumultuous approach or over the din of my own heart.

"You’re not dead!" I exclaim happily as I withdraw from her embrace, my tail swaying delightedly behind me, legs prancing boyishly beneath me as I pivot to beam sunshiney smiles at my sire (only now noticing that there is a sort of tension in the air), "dad! She’s not dead!"

"Where have you been!" I demand of her as soon as I can get my hooves to sit still, ears falling back almost comically as I turn towards her with my golden eyes wide, wondering, the old hurt at having been abandoned resurging as quickly as it had been forgotten in my delight at seeing her again (and dying back down as I thought of all I had to tell her about Aithniel, and the Rift, and the mountain)…

[ OOC: He's a good distance off (probably 20+ yards) when he starts towards them, so Ulrik should have time to respond without Rikyn really hearing. ^^ ]