The look that crosses her face, the one of horror, of self loathing, of trepidation, flickers past his naïve eyes, read only as a hesitation that he has touched one of her things. For a moment, he himself is filled with the same fear that floods Ranjiri as she wonders if she has hurt him in her time of darkness, one that digs claws into his weak spots and whispers that he is being rejected. He is not wanted. She can see him for what he is and she will have none of his smut, his foolish logic; he is only a man she once met in the borders of a home and shared brief words with, one that she has marked off as a waste of time.

Her quietness is explained, quite suddenly, why it is she stood so far away from him and hadn’t bothered to call out his name as he had hers.

Why does it hurt so bad? She’s not even worth the worry he’s spared on her, not by the laws he’d been fed for the young years of his life, and he barely knows her at all.

But she meets his eyes again, still not rebuking him entirely though she seems as if she’d rather he went away. Meekly, he tells her that he’s glad she’s alive, words that don’t really seem to mean much in the wake of his newfound knowledge that she finds him appalling, and after a moment of silence, he is stunned again, his mind reeling into an entirely different direction.

Such a strange sound has come from the throat of the girl, almost as if the grass she halfheartedly grazed on had wadded into a tight ball and attempted to strangle her, and her face darts down to her knees, her tear ducts rubbed vigorously on her gold coated knees.

Suddenly, he understands; his heart is flooded with a sensation like pity, a feeling that clicks all the parts into place as she whispers her thank you and reaches to grab the feather from the ground.

Ranjiri had become the darkness. She hadn’t been disgusted with him for having her feather at all; she had been disgusted with herself, worried that he’d earned them while fighting for his life. His frown grows deep and morose, thoughts trailing to the branch knitted into his tail, regret that he had been given such an object while kind girls such as Ranjiri had been forced to face the beasts without help in sight, and its suddenly to hard to look at her.

He stares away, out into the horizon, his own tears biting into his eyes as he thinks of all the others who had fallen because life had blessed him with protection over them. Mirage, he thinks, softly, sadly, wondering where she was and how it had come to pass that his beloved Queen had been taken from them when she was so loved; how had they let her fall? And what of Lace, Semira, Smoke, Destrier, Mesec; so many that had not been seen or heard of since the break of darkness, so many that his heart mourned for though he never truly knew them at all.

They were his family. He knew that they would have mourned for him, too.

Closing his lids tightly over his sights, he is pulled back into reality by the gentle touch of lips on his withers. Opening his blue eyes and pivoting his face to see the black feather returned to his dark hair, he smiles despite his sadness in light of her words. "Gladly," he grins, mildly embarrassed by the compliment knit into her wording, slipping into his awkward silence as he looks at the black and gold lass.

After a moment, he tilts his head to the side, a thought having tugged at his consciousness, crystalline eyes glimmering deeply. "Whatever happened since we last met," he says with his deep voice, the bass rugged and bottomless, "whatever you did… it hasn’t changed you in ways that you are not letting it. You are still Ranjiri, as I remember you." Reaching over with a dark rimmed muzzle to offer her a comforting nudge along the ridge her cheeks, her breathes in softly the way she smells, confirming his words even as he speaks them. "I did something really bad, once," he says, not sure why he’s chosen her of all the horses in the world to talk about this with, "no one knows about it. The only other ones who did… well I’m sure they're both dead now.”

He knows Shadow is dead, he saw it himself, and he hasn’t seen hide or hair Ricochet since that long ago afternoon at the wall. It can only mean one thing, considering the darkness; he wasn’t so naïve as to deny the effects of disaster.

"I know the weight you carry on your heart."

He sighs, breaking his eye contact with her, staring hard at the flowers in the grass.

"It’s too heavy to carry forever."

@[Ranjiri]

Dragomir