Rikyn

She doesn’t ask me about my battles, which I will admit I am slightly off put by – mostly because I like the opportunity to brag. She doesn’t answer my question, either, which means maybe she isn’t listening. It makes me look at her a little harder, wondering if maybe the sadness, that had made her quiet and droll on our patrol all those months ago, had just been hiding behind her smile. I know it’s hard to think about what is happening in front of you when your head is busy drudging through a mire.

She should block off the inlets. I’ve been filling mine with the bones of relationships lost to the flow of time. I’ve mortared them tight with every ounce of anger I’ve ever felt. Sure, sometimes they explode, but I can usually ward off their waves for a while with my poorly contrived emotional dams.

Those conquests fade into the wind, the words replaced instead with more braggart’s remarks; the sort of attitude that had led to my fights in the first place, if angst and my terrifically large ego didn’t catch the blame first. Her smirk is a welcome sight, and I return it, though her words make the smile become genuine, humor igniting in my eyes.

"But the other ways are much less fun," I remark, naïve laughter at the danger of the game I play warmly filling the air.

The inquiry which comes next makes me snort, which might be taken as rude; the truth is, I’d rather not live anywhere that someone bosses me around. I’d like to be the boss, but without the responsibility of, you know, being the boss. Unfortunately, those things don’t really seem to go together unless you decide to live alone, in the wilderness.

"No," is my answer, as if the sarcastic blast of air hadn’t already said as much, "the only place that ever felt like it could be home was the Basin, anyway. And it’s… different now, not as it was when I was young."

Filled with pegasus and hybrids and equines, oh my. I had a hard enough time dealing with the situation for the brief while that I had, and I had disliked the soldier’s agenda as much as I had the droll life of a generic herd loiterer, as well. It had led to where I was now, I guess looking for somewhere that wasn’t real, at least until I could find a way to make it.

"I guess I’ve been trying to make my own, instead," I smile, hoping to keep the conversation from digressing into darkness (and an inevitable end more swiftly than is necessary), "a home, that is."