Seren
interstellar

There was no more to say on the beginning topic for them; Seren let it go. She took a deep breath, inhaling long and slow, and as she began her exhale she put the thought, the feelings surrounding that set of words, and let it slide from her mind. Truth be told it would be there, but Seren, learning so much here, would do her best from now to not use the word like she had. Indeed hard habits are difficult to break, but she could.

She would.

Seren wouldn't let her fear dominate her any more.

Her eyes turned to the lights overhead as their colour shifted a in a sudden burst of sparkling brightness, and she was mesmerised by it. She wondered if in the Basin these lights could be seen overhead; they were truly a marvel to behold. The woman of the Rift lowered her gaze back, though her true attention had never left Elspeth. Not once.

She inclined her head so slighlty.

“It sounds like an interesting place... I have never seen hot springs before, but I have been in the Heart Caves and seen their glory; they were wonderful,” she says. Caverns were a strange place to go for an equine; those who preferred the open sky and space, where claustrophobia found it difficult to run rampant. Seren had felt that feeling in the caves, the feeling of being closed in... but the Heart Caves had been soothing in some way.

She wondered if the Basin's cave system was similar.

“I... I'm not sure if I'm up to visiting a herdland yet. But I will remember what you have said... and I feel safer close by these lights,” she says, “the feeling of something long lost clutches at my heart whenever I see them, and I feel the touch of something I thought I'd never be able to feel again...”

When Elspeth says she is not from the Rift, Seren is, for a moment, relieved. She did not have to live with the terror that had come to them, and what had happened. Yet what comes next from her, she is immediately, deeply and truly empathetic. Her eye filled with a sadness for her; not pity, but she instead gave her, or at least tried what she thought was a reassuring smile.

“You are free here... being able to walk free of the bounds of those who held power over you, it is … it is something that one never is able to forget. Learning to be who you are without them, without their terrible force over you though... you are so strong, Elspeth...” she says in a quiet voice, “I hope one day to be able to walk like you and be free in spirit and mind,” she says, her heart gripping this wish and holding it tight.

Seren is quiet; her own path behind her was not one filled with violence and terror like Elspeth's. It was a different sort; mental manipulation, forced and repeated upon her, so often until the Rift had taken her during Nocturne's cataclysm. “I will never see my own family again; they wouldn't even know who I am anymore, and even then I couldn't face them for the decisions I made... and escaping the demon's hold over me... all I remember in the end of her grip was fire and terror, and then the Rift where I thought I would live until I died, until the collision with this world here. I fought a God alongside those of Helovia... and then I took my own steps of freedom here, without the weight of anyone else, anything else but my past weighing me down,” her own words are chosen and spoken in a soft manner, not wishing to go into the detail of the demon, not wanting to bring her to mind – not wishing in turn to give anything that would give Elspeth further worry, bring up more memories...

“Here is to second chances,” she says, lifting her head as her dual horns shimmered in the light, reflecting their colours.

After a moment her head falls a little, into resting, and she looks to Elspeth, wondering. “If I am not intruding... is there anything else you can tell me about the Basin at all...?”

Seren longed to feel a apart of something again, deep inside her mind. Perhaps there was a path somewhere here for her to take...