I am a quiet god
and my hunger
is cavernous

A soft twitter of laughter falls from her lips as Rikyn defers to her teasing with a grin, sparking a lightheartedness in her ivory breast that had not had the kindling to grow in many moons. The outside world was disappointing in ways she hadn't anticipated, bringing with it pawns that fell too easily for her wiles and womanly charms. Nameless faces that mattered little to her. No kin or acquaintances, friends or pawns with which to amuse herself. There was no history out there in the brambles and spiraling pathways. Though she could have easily built a kingdom of her own, never returned to the harrying, harrowing nature of Helovia, it did not beckon to her the way her motherland did. Perhaps Thranduil did not understand that entirely, but even with the barest flicker of her eyes over his countenance, Hotaru could see what a difference Rikyn's presence alone caused in him. This was where they were meant to be. Carrying on in the shadows of their mentors, becoming legends themselves, until time and age whisked them away into the void as it had their idols.

Idols...and Hotaru's face fell somewhat somber to recall Illynx. The first to foster the manipulative threads in her soul, untangling them where they had fallen into the corners of her personality, buried away beneath shame and anxiety. She had given Hotaru so much, and the Valkyrie would never be able to properly thank her. Fate had taken that decision from her, and so all she was left with were the ashen words lining the edges of her teeth, bitter and acrid with uselessness and regret.

"She was an amazing mare," Hotaru spoke softly, still feeling her age like a noose around her neck. Weighted by everything life had thrown at her, a ball that grew ever heavier as the chain grew tighter. "She would be prouder than anyone to see you take the throne, Brat King or otherwise," and here her lips twisted into a teasing smirk, ears flickering with amusement. It did not hurt as she had anticipated, to see another wearing the circlet that had crested her forehead for so long. Perhaps she'd simply had it on her mind so long in the wilds beyond the borders that reality could not stand up against the worst ideas she'd conjured during their travels.

So with a quiet blessing for his rule she turns to Gwyn, charmed by her childish words and prim mannerisms. A princess in the making. "And what does a princess like you hope to be, my child? A dashing knight like your father? Or the one who chases after them to heal their silly wounds?" Motherhood bubbled in her throat, coloring her words with effervescent golden hues, seeking to enchant and amuse. Hotaru ached for her own children, the one she'd only just found - who had already escaped into the shadows of the tired morning - and the ones she feared to never find again. She had fallen prey to crippling anxiety in the quiet of her thoughts, terrified to fail the ones in her womb as she had been doomed to fail all the others she'd borne and raised.

Rexanna's soft query and compliment draw her from the echo of her fears, and Hotaru gives a grimace of a smile. "I do not feel it," she confesses, wondering if the woman can hear the soft rasp in her breathing, notice the sweat drenching the shadows of her neck where the morning light cannot reveal her secrets. Her face turns slightly grim as she leans against her beloved, loathe to admit to the weakness of her small body and dainty bones. Cursed with twins from her mother's genes, cursed further with a body not built to foster them.

Though the Valkyrie would rather converse with the cute child than face her once best friend, admit to the struggles she experiences daily, the news of the land was far more important to know than a filly's dreams for her future.

A flinch crawls across the delicate woman's hide to hear of Kaos, and sorrow strikes pain through her gut at the crumbling of the Falls. It had been her birthland, once. Though it held no claim to her heart, no sway to her allegiances, it pained Hotaru to know it did not even exist in the manner in which she had known it.

Eyes close and her face turns away from the news of the death of Ulrik - one she had scarcely known - and Deimos; one she had known far too well. His death was still a festering wound on her heart, recalling the monsoon that had overtaken the land, the cold of it on her skin and the barren chasm that she had felt far too keenly at her side. He had been a Lord to envy and fear, and she had loved him in her own way.

"I'm sorry, Rikyn," is all she can muster instead, fragile words that do not become her in the least. But she knows the death of a parent, of both. No matter how the weakness reflects on her now, Hotaru cannot forgive herself the silence she would otherwise choose. "But you will surely be a fine Lord." It was the only blessing she could give, because Hotaru was still a creature of pride. A former Lady.

Rexanna brings forth her own news, though Hotaru knows little of the Edge and its politics. Still she cannot help the pulse of her heart at her twin sister's name, hope prickling like warning thorns in her ribcage. "Raeden? How is she?" The matching bracelet on her cannon bone seems to become heavier with the reminder. The Valkyrie can handle any news, because at least her twin is alive. It was a lot to ask for with the nature of Helovia.

Until Rexanna, smooth with her subtlety in a way Hotaru had always known her to be, proposes something that stiffens the arches of the rose's shoulders. A hiss of malcontent broils between her teeth, though she does not allow it escape. Already the gears in her lover's head can be heard turning, biting deep into the potential offered to them with insistent, carnivorous teeth.

Hotaru had wanted to go home. It had been a source of bickering for the two of them many times as they neared Helovia's Threshold, neither wanting to budge in their stubborn natures. Thranduil did not want to return to the Basin, certainly not now with the colt they'd known from birth at the helm. Hotaru had refused to listen to any other option, yearning for the blistering cold of her home. The glittering lakeside where all of her children had been born.

How could she abandon that? How could she break that tradition, treat these twins any differently than she had her previous? They would never know the sight of the sturdy mountains against the violet skies, would not huddle beneath her belly in search of warmth. It hurt to imagine for a mother as devoted as Hotaru.

But Thranduil croons softly to her, hesitance trailing on the edges of each word, because he knows how important the Basin is to Hotaru. She loved and defended it as fiercely as a viper, unforgiving and possessive. It was her home.

Still...the weight of her belly and the stress on her aching spine can't be denied. His grin prompts one in return from her, automatic, rising to the flare of his flame. Still she can't help but step closer to him as he nudges her towards Rexanna, petty and stubborn as she mulls over it in silence. Could she even manage to ascend the twisted pathway of her home? It would kill her to only make it partway there only for her knees to sink uselessly beneath her, taunting her with her own weakness and the siren call of home ringing in her ears.

Returning with Rexanna though? But on the other hand there was her sister...

With a forceful exhale, harks slicing back against her neck in a display of violent displeasure, the ice of her exterior hardens into something chilling and impenetrable. If they would ask her to break, to bend, then they would not witness it firsthand.

"Send my thoughts to Tiamat, if you will. I will see her soon, if all goes well," she directs to Rikyn, the only evidence of her decision. "And...thank you, for the information. Keep yourself, and Gwyn, safe. I would hate to lose the cutest babe I know," Hotaru ends on a playful tease, grin dancing on the corners of her lips. If he could imply her age, then she could do the same.

Turning, she tilts her cheek against Thranduil's neck, the cold of her horn brushing against his warm skin for a brief moment.

"I shan't go without complaint, I still think the ice is far better than any useless mist." The 'but' lay unsaid, her verbal agreement refusing to show its face in her prideful mouth. At least the Edge had her Goddess, her sister. Perhaps her health, Gods willing. Turning to angle her lips intimately to the Laurelin's hark, she whispers, as far beneath her vocals as she can manage to hide further weakness from any who crane their ears to listen. "We must go now, love. I...do not think I have the strength to remain here any longer." Motion, at least, could be sustained once initiated. Stillness was where her joints creaked and the twins kicked and pushed against her insides. Hotaru was convinced she was holding off birth through sheer force of will alone, needing the safety of a herdland before she let herself fold beneath the weight of her children's demands. Even if it was not the herdland she had been hoping for all this time.