[ OOC:: evidently I love you and Deo so I'm sorry you have to read a novel. xD ]

The pristine blue walls were enchanting, her head soon carried away with ruminations about what could be frozen within their thick layers, stowed away in the ice caverns for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. Perhaps there was armor crafted by the first dragons of the land, or the bones of the first unicorn to stream forth upon the earth, his ancient horn kept sharp and hungry by the cold, cold grave. Her hooves chimed their way with every step, her delicately chiseled face searching across every surface for nothing in particular, her eyes occasionally finding a stone or some other random, earthen object frozen solid in the ice, but nothing more and nothing less. A soft sigh escaped from her, disappointment nearly as old as she was giving way to the soft cloud of air that issued from her nostrils; she had spent many a day in her youth examining the ice for dead mages and ancient dragons, and while she now felt silly looking within the crystals for her fantasies at this late in life, it also filled her with the soft and gently aching melancholy of nostalgia. She found that far too often she clung to her past, the life before the death of her family and the loss of her home, before her spirit had been shoved into a misshapen bottle and cast to sea.

She had come to shore many years later, but she was not the same child that had once been. She no longer felt magic pouring from the seams of the universe, merely saw it, as one would the glistening trail of a spider's web as it drifts from one doorway to another, and the tangible nature of magic in her adult life had taken most of the joy out of nature in and of itself. But not the ice. The ice, it would seem, had frozen her admiration in place, grown in vein-like streaks from the roots of her heart until she felt, at points, that all her blood had frozen within her, and that she could feel nothing but a gnawing desire for power and a clean, wingless world, in which all the pretty horses had horns and Illynx was queen of them all.

But isn't that more childish than searching for myths in a frozen tunnel? Perhaps that was what the wolf dream had meant, before Psyche had awoken her on her night of return to the mountain lake. Or, perhaps like many dreams, it meant nothing.

The sound of a second set of hooves made Illynx draw still, her ears flickering atop her feminine cranium to assure that they were not just echoes; she had made it relatively far in to the cavern, after all, and it was liable that she was making herself nervous with her own sounds. But, in her drawn position, the beats continued, sounding just a slight decibel higher than her own, luring the mare's golden eyes to the entrance of the aquamarine tunnel just as the other arrived. A short breath escaped from her lungs as she realized she was not going to have to pretend he wasn't there or kill him, depending on the circumstance - a long, elegantly spiraled horn protruded from his brow, it's color deep blood intertwined with opaque glass, giving the appendage a unique variety of crimson and transparent hues along its length. His scent wafted in behind him, the chilly breeze that was kept from their flesh by the tunnel itself seemingly having clung to his skin as he made his way in, and he smelled not only of ice and male pheromones but also of the Basin. She swept her eyes across his frame, realizing who he was after a few moments of thought; they had been within close proximity of each other for most of their lives, and yet until now, there had never arisen a time or a place in which they might know each other.

It would seem that the male had noticed her searching for the bones of the first horned, an amused smile featured on his lips, though she noted that his indigo gaze was hard as the sinew lining his frame. If she had fur to ruffle, surely it would do so now, her eyes suddenly becoming indignant as her nose elevated itself slightly higher and she pivoted so as to be facing Déodat. Illynx was a proud bird to all of Helovia, especially handsome men who interrupted her quiet, albeit naive and childish, winter activities. She was glad, however, when his words were not mocking or unkind, his cold eyes giving away that he didn't particularly care for conversation but the tone of his voice inviting enough, her own disgruntled expression melting away into her usual bright and deceptively whimsical smile. "Perhaps the most beautiful in all Helovia, Time God take no offense," she giggled, thinking to the bay pair's home just north of their current location, which had it's own beauties, to be sure, but nothing compared to the grandeur of the ancient ice caverns that littered the northern shore.

She covered some of the distance between them, Déodat's words having covered a fair distance (not a difficult feat in such a vast and sound amplifying location), but she would rather they not shout back and forth down the tunnel and accidentally bring the whole thing down on top of them. Though, she thought bemusedly, to be trapped in a cave with such a handsome fellow would not be all too terrible. Handsome, indeed - she let her golden orbs slide across his pelt, from the white capped shoulders to his long, supple mane that hung below his chest, even the white streak the burst from his mane in much a same fashion that the golden strands did from her own. The soldier was an undeniably desirable distraction from her ruminations upon the ice, and she applied extra care to the way her hips curved and tilted as she sauntered towards him, small hooves singing with every step. "You are the soldier named Déodat, are you not?" she asked when she had come close enough for conversation, in her opinion, the warm masculine odor of the stallion washing over her and mingling with her own lightly feminine scents; it had taken quite a bit of mental file rummaging, but she had uncovered what she believed to be his name if her memory had not grown so rusty that she could not longer adequately places faces and smells with their callings. "I am Illynx." Her gilded gaze traveled his features, the light within in them implying, she hoped, that she was aware he may already have known, as she had known his, but regardless had felt the desire to firmly place her title within his mind; inwardly, she hoped only that he would love her, his heart like a bird she could trap within her chest until either his death or release would be of some benefit to her. It was entirely beyond her control at points, the desire to be surrounded by and in control of all the beautiful things she had ever laid her eyes on, even some things which were simply ordinary; the mare, inadvertently, clutched to power with every once of strength she had, even as she traipsed through life pretending to be in control of it all. "The ice," she said, returning her eyes suddenly back to the tall blue walls, her vision sweeping up their heights and then back to the white splashed stallion's face, "do you think there is anything frozen within it?"

The question was asked childishly, a bright sparkle shimmering about in the depths of her irises as she awaited his answer; part of her worried that he would mock her for such a foolish question, which would more than likely slice her ego all the deeper for the simple fact that she found this one rather alluring in comparison to some of the other stags she had encountered among her brethren thus far, while the other part simply was curious. Surely to the Goddess she was not the only one who had ever seen the great ice structures of the northern shore and wondered what lie in the deepest sheets, where the frozen water became so thick that the blue was bright and impenetrable by the naked eye.