Sikeax,

Leadership has given her a thin line to walk upon, one that she struggles with so pitifully that she questions if those that had previously supported her, cried out their allegiance to her at the death of her predecessor, still wanted her to hold this title. It throws all the agony it can manage to inflict upon her in unison. She is left with a throne that she cannot fit her small, weak body into, holding overweight sword in healer’s hands only ever stained by the blood of her work and not the blood of war, being told by the world around her and the societies outside of her southern island that change is coming, and that there’s not a single possible way to for it to be gentle. She either has to toughen up or crumble before everyone that she’s ever considered dear, but bravery and strength are two boulders that each weigh more than a ton, ones that she can barely lift high enough to wiggle her fingers beneath their brims in just an attempt at lifting them.
Hobgoblin, her unlikely savior, takes it in strife for her, but not in the way that she would personally. What she has gained has easily become his own, and in the light of it, he drives it into darkness so deep that the light cowers in fear at the mere thought of penetrating it. It brings him power, something he’s only ever wanted in this life, the right to kill and escape from his actions if he sees fit, the ability to control others so far below him that he believes that they do not breathe even the same air as him.
And at his control and might, she walks this fine line with a balancing pole extended and prepares for the worst as she hopes for the best, chasing the invisible marks of their borders painted by waves and stone. Except today, she gifts herself with the chance to enjoy her family, curled so close to Bella that they might as well be glued onto one another.
Duty laughs in her face, if not all of them. Hobgoblin’s attachment to the filly is larger than the highest mountain that he has seen in the distance, and at the shriek that abruptly haunts the stillness of the Dragon’s Throat, he digs further, searching for the safety of her daughter.
You don’t have to go if you don’t want to. Words do nothing to hide the fact that she still strongly comforts herself in the idea that Hobgoblin will come with her.
He doesn’t.
She gallops on tired limbs, heaving in cold sweat by the time that the three bodies rise out of the desert and damn her into a life that she has sworn herself free from the very moment that she couldn’t save the one that meant most. The child could be dying as far as she is aware, and here she is, ready to say no, that I can’t do this to those who are begging her with their voices instinctual to save someone she barely knows with something that she no longer has that she feels as if she’s known her entire life.
This is her, all by herself, facing the world with something she’s done so many times in the past, but driven down into the stone age.
Already, she is losing her patient. Instinct kicks in as she dives, taking the blade mounted against her head and bravely thrusting it to the hip of the child, looking for a way to bring her to her attention just long enough for her to figure out what to do.
Impatience invades as she expects the child to immediately stir. Sand climbs into her coat at the knees and below as she crumbles beside her body, basking in the coolness of the shade as it climbs over her.
“Don’t go to sleep on me!” Vicious outcries carried out from the seriousness of the situation lets her spare no comfort for the child. “I need to know exactly what’s going on and how you feel, what’s hurting, everything to help you, and once you do that, you can sleep. Deal?”
She needs to learn, if not today but even someday, that making deals with the ill is an useless game.
The devil will always win in the end.

OOC: just for future reference, go ahead and tag Sikeax the very moment you need her in a thread. i'll get to it quicker that way.
Hobgoblin isn't around so therefore has zero form here.
the mentioned stab was nothing more than a rough prod, it might break the skin but not dive in and do some damage.
and last but not least, please ONLY tag me when it's my turn to post.
talk