Ivezho

I waited for you, she said, her words both filling his heart and crushing it simultaneously. She waited, he thought with bitterness, but what was she waiting for? Me, or.. he didn't want to finish his thought, because it wasn't fair, it wasn't right, and he knew it, he just didn't want to admit it. He was lying to himself, as much as he was lying to everyone else, but he clung to that lie because if he faced the truth - he would have to admit just how horrible a stallion he truly was.

What he did believe was the truth was that he wasn't worthy: or her attention, of being able to call the Throat his home, of anything. And yet it was everything he wanted, to be accepted, to become worthy.. But he couldn’t do it. He couldn't work past the block within his own mind that was preventing him from moving forward - it as making him behave like a right ass instead, where he couldn't say what he wanted to and where he heard the truth from Ranjiri's lips and only wanted to throw them back at her, with ears pinned and his own lips curved back in distaste.

Look at you, she insisted, and she described that which Ivezho hated about himself. The glow, like it should be the reason for him to never leave the Throat. The mark of the Sun Lord's powers within him, like it should be an anchor forever holding him within the Throat's sandy ocean. Ivezho did pin his ears at the thought, anger flaring across his face; he wanted to say so much, to shout and throw her words back at her - but then, he saw her face fall, her expression morph from stern to soft, from angry to upset, and he forgot everything he was going to shout at her, everything he was going to refute.

He stepped forward, wanting to near her, wanting to sling his crown over her nape and hold her, if she would allow it.

"I'm an idiot," he murmured, admitting another truth. "You have done more for the Throat than I ever will be able to. You fit there, you've made them your family. I.. I'm an idiot and even I can see that you definitely belong there." He didn't know how else to explain it - how did you make one see something that could only be seen from another's eyes?

The irony of the situation was not lost on him, and he smiled sheepishly at the thought.

"I've not felt like I belong anywhere all this time.. I don't know why I left.. I just had to. I had to see what was out there, I had to know if.. If I even could survive out there, on my own." He let silence swallow his words then, as his thoughts trickled through his crown. It was the most he had said on the matter, ever, and talking about it out loud made it all the more real - it solidified the foolishness he knew he had enacted, it made his calling himself an idiot repeatedly all the more true.

"I should've known better. But like I said. I'm an idiot."