Яikyn

For all the horrible things the girl thought of Volterra for leaving me in such a state, I thought the opposite: he had done no more than what was required to hone his skills, and to temper my own. That she doesn’t understand is a common affliction of the sheltered, the demure; it has been explained to me more than once by my mother – that leaders are born to protect the sheep.

She must be a sheep, this girl, all dusted with white.

She cannot be expected, then, to know that this was how you became a man, a warrior. The fires of war care not for what they consume, or who is burned. It was a necessary part of life, as far as I was concerned, anyway, to learn to survive that ruthlessness, and the easiest way to learn was to become ruthless yourself.

That she pities me for my rites of passage is something that I might take offense to on any day other than this, but I honestly hurt too bad, and the sympathy almost feels good, because it means that, for the time being, anyway, I’m the most important thing on someone’s mind.

While her face says she wants to argue with me when I shove off her concern, she doesn’t. I appreciate that, like I don’t appreciate how she seems to settle in alongside me after being admonished for thinking she could go somewhere.

I guess it’s my fault, anyway, arrives a conclusion as to who to blame when I feel the urge to push her away from me clutch at my conscious thoughts, she’d have left if you’d let her just now.

But she might have died.

Who cares?

“Try to get some sleep,” she oddly commands, her voice too youthful to be the whip she wishes; it earns her an amused glance, the tilt of my features revealing a glimmer of laughter hidden behind the stoic guise I believe all knights should wear. Besides, the words are no spell, and sleep evaded me the entire time I chased it before she arrived; does she think she can will my body to cease feeling with her words? “I’ll keep watch.”

I smile at that thought as I watch the wind ripple the moss, unable to repress it as I had for her first overly serious comment. Watch for what? Harpies, looking for somewhere to hide from the blizzard? Nothing and no one is out here, girl, but you and I, and you were terrified from the wind alone. The thought of her meeting with any of the local wildlife (aside from the rabbits and squirrels, of course) almost makes me sputter with laughter out loud.

She’d likely pee herself at the sight of a Yeti.

Is she trying to insinuate something? I wonder at her hesitance, feeling the cold wind run through the cover and across my skin. The velvet of my coffee coat is thick, prepared for the cold, but hers is the fine, delicate silks of the desert people to the south, so lightly layered in warming down that I suddenly feel quite the mammoth, my chin covered in a thick curl of bristles (that I hope is growing into a beard as fine as my sire’s, and uncle’s), coat coarse with thick, heat holding growth. I was bred from stock bred for mountains, born to this mountain’s maelstrom in the midst of a lightning’s crackle.

She is not a snow queen. She is a princess of sand and sun. The only part of me that is cold is the part which is soaked in my own fluids. I don’t wonder if every part of her is freezing.

"Are you cold?" I roughly grumble as I look over at her, feeling my belly clench and my heart revolt at the notion of having to touch her, but disliking the thought of letting a woman – a freaking filly, at that – freeze to death even more, especially while she does her best to make sure I don’t bleed to death on her watch.

Why is she even here? Why does she even care?

When she gets seemingly frustrated out of no where (females) and demands my name, my ears fall back (and who the fuck are you?!) and my tail sways irritably behind me for a moment, my mind doing its best to gather the emotional outburst threatening to kick her in the mouth for being so unreasonably bossy (pegasi). The world wobbles again as I look back to her, she spins, becomes topsy turvy and then right side up again.

She’s just upset, I remind myself, she’s never seen someone so hurt before. She’s lost. It’s hell out there.

Don’t be a total asshole for once.

Also, don’t pass out. Can’t be the big hero if you fall over like a bitch.

"Does it matter?" that’s not quite what I had in mind, mouth, I take another look at my wound (it’s stopped bleeding, the cold freezing the previous flow into bright red flakes that cling, and glisten); a sigh of relief finds me, my eyes closing ever so slightly.

Maybe I should try to sleep again, the dark comforting, calm.

"Rikyn," I offer after some seconds, frowning because why didn’t you lie to her?, frowning because its so very hard to make my eyes open again to look at her, to seek her pretty eyes – two tone, the color of fields and rivers, I notice, only now – muted in the dark light and the refracted light of the snow churning outside, against the stone at our hooves, "my name is Rikyn."

there's no place to hide down here