Яikyn

If he thinks he would already have won my trust, he’s wrong. I don’t trust anyone, anymore, not even my own mother; not unless they’ve given me a hundred reasons to, or have always been there for me. Toulouse has neither of these qualities, but he can think what he wants to about me; being young doesn’t mean I haven’t been taught how brittle each relationship we forge is, with one in a hundred being lasting, or meaningful to both parties. I simply smile, an irksome thing, that reads “I know something you don’t know,” but is otherwise as handsome as any other of my expressions (this is me we’re talking about, after all).

What sort of work? I want to ask, as he continues with more than assumptions, but hold my tongue, instead, and let my eyes rove across his face, catching the change of expression, but naïve to its meaning as anything more than that, surely there was more to this work that just doing what he was told. With a narrowing gaze of my own, I let him continue, telling more of what his intensions are, and of what had transpired in the misty woodland.

He explains that he had done for them as he had done here; brought home armor, and weaponry, and exchanged his blood and services for the success of his people. What he explains of his treatment is not all that different from the false kindness of the Dragonheart, who had stolen children from their mother’s flanks under the guise of peace.

So, they are the same as they have always been, I think, the same two-faced people my mother hated, and whom my father had claimed to change, when he went to live with then King Torleik. I close my eyes, and wonder if they had ever changed at all, or if the first time my father’s unerring logic would be felled, would come after he had been, himself.

I open my eyes as he speaks of Mihtal, a name I try to remember for the sake of listening, of watching; I try to remember, also, Halali.

Everyone in this world seems to have lost so much. Was that the cost, for the gift of waking Gods, of magical power and elemental weaving?

"Hm, sounds like the same old Qian tactic to me; smile upfront, and throw daggers from behind. Regardless, etiquette alone doesn’t keep me from other’s borders, personally," I say with a grin, "I’ll do what I want, even if I’m looking for nothing but trouble. Besides…"

I say, sighing, wondering if I should try this open-ness situation Duir keeps suggesting to me, and which Tiamat had too.

"I left everything, to go after someone I loved, once, too," I admit to him, cutting it short, there, because I don’t love her anymore, not after what she did; I hope yours wind up being worth it, "loneliness drives us to do pretty reckless things, I guess. The uh... the Throat isn't gonna come for your head on a stick, are they?"

I ask, with a sidelong smirk.

"You'll need to bring home a lot more stuff to make up for that shit show, if I gotta save your ass from rampaging bird-people," I laugh.

in every heart a hole