I AM IRON AND I FORGE MYSELF

She’s going to get a damn crick in her neck if she has to keep looking up at the guy. From her vantage point, she cannot necessarily tell that his legs are weak and unable to hold his weight, that disuse has affected him so much that he will never storm in formation, but always fly high above, as the lookout. No, all she sees is a foreigner who will not touch down, and there is not yet a logical reason for it. There does not seem to be much disability here in Helovia, and those that have it wear it like a second a skin: a metal wing, the inability to speak, blindness - only internal ailments are hidden. Wessex’s flaws are in her ego, her perfectionism, and potentially in her infatuation - though that has yet to be seen.

Lizard eyes mark his sharp, raptor-like movements and find them… peculiar. Yes, that’s the word for it: not quite ethereal, but most definitely otherworldly. Too far away to see his eyes, she can imagine that he sums her up the same way - tallying comparisons and size and known strengths and flaws. Whatever score he gives her must be adequate (either that, or curiosity completely overrides all other intuition. That, and a clawing belly and devastating thirst), because he replies. Ever so slightly foreign (to be truthful, many Helovians have a touch of an accent from somewhere - a couple more so than others), his words seem almost as strange as the fact that he still has yet to land.

Surely it couldn’t be this easy. Before replying, her gaze searches the area around him, perhaps for others who may be listening, half-worried that he may simply be an advance scout, come to find Helovia’s weakness. Each land is strong in their own way, having warriors or dragons or blizzards and metal protectors at their beck and call, and an invading force would find it hard to divide and conquer. Her horned head indicated a direction behind her, “Due Northwest, as the crow fiies. Where are you from, He-Who-Does-Not-Land?”

He must be desperate, she thinks, to feel like he must repeat a word. “Sky? What is… Ohhhh… you mean the big open space. Yes, The Basin is a large valley, surrounded by mountains, but there’s plenty of flat, open space around it.” She thinks specifically of the landbridge, the steppe, and the heavenly fields. But no sooner has she finished than n ‘Hey!’ followed by the sound of a medium-sized object crashing through the boughs behind her cause Wessex to turn and face where she thinks the origin of the noise is, and when the leaves and twigs clear, the little horse is obvious.

Her eyes roll. Ain’t nobody got no time for whatever tomfoolery the pint-sized horse might try to rouse up.

W E S S E X