It seems his words have had some positive effect on her, the way her sniffling stills and the tears cease flowing; she even tucks her pretty face into her knees again, wiping away the few residual damp patches that clung to her dark pelt, and he smiles softly at her through his inward aching, glad he could console at least her, even when the words that had spared her suffering could not ease that which he felt inside himself. One of his ears holds onto her words, a blue eye finding purchase on her face as she complements him, his smile deepening in its truth.

He doesn’t believe her, not entirely, but she can’t be lying with such sweetly flickering eyes and how she reaches forth to embrace him. He does wonder if her horn will gouge him as she moves her face nearer his cheek and feels a tensing of the tissue around where her breath first touches before the full closeness of her features close on him, but he does not balk or cower as he once had when Semira had first imposed herself on him; he doesn’t even feel as reserved around Ranjiri as he had the first time, and he supposes that is a good sign.

Maybe his heart can be cured, after all; maybe the light of the Moon had seeped slowly into his soul, maybe…maybe it might save him.

"I’ve been sad most of my life," he explains, not sure why, "mother always said I’d gotten it from my dad. I think it’s just this place." He pauses, lips pursing, his crystalline eyes darkening a shade or two as he ponders his state of mental health since arriving. Surely, his soul was more worthy than it had once been, even with its myriad stains and tears, but he’d had few nights of peace even when he felt such love for his herd and adoptive family. The very nature of this land challenged him daily, hourly, even now as he looks back to Ranjiri, seeking the words to explain what he meant, not wanting to have her believe he does not love Helovia or those he has met, only that it is hard. "I was raised a different way than most of the others here. Every day is a struggle against what I thought to be true and what I am learning truly is."

Her next words are so ironic that he chuckles without meaning too, smiling awkwardly at its cessation so that Ranjiri knows he was not laughing at the notion of their friendship in such a way as to be hurtful; it was rather that if his father could see him here, if his old Gods had lived to watch him, they would be displeased that he had even helped her stop crying, much less that he took in her words with serious consideration. In ways, she already was; he knew that friends and family were there to lend support when all the footing had been swept out from under you, and it was what he had just done.

Still, she was the only one who had ever asked and thus the only one he could truly call a friend without assuming it was so because they had always answered him when he called for them or had been helpful when the need had arisen. It was comforting to think of it that way, and so slowly his head nods, his eyes flicker with the smile that graces his dark muzzle.

"Sure," he says, pushing aside his worries that he is failing his father and making his mother weep softly into Israfel’s bronze scales and smiling at the golden and black hybrid, "anytime you get lonely, I’ll be here for you. Just come and find me."

And I'll do my best to make you smile.

@[Ranjiri]

Dragomir