Kahlua

For a moment he was silent, smiling towards her, but the queen did not find the action foolish or unwelcome. Being in his presence was calming, refreshing... it took the burden off her shoulders and gave her peace from the hectic life that had been pushed upon her shoulders, that she had begged for, from the Lady Moon herself. Knowing now what she didn't know then, the queen was not sure she would have taken the job upon her shoulder but she could not back down now. She could not disappoint the Lady Moon when the goddess had put so much faith in her. She had to toil on, to trudge through difficulty and strife to come out better on the other side. The queen just wished it didn't have to be so hard.

Finally the Glazier realizes that he is meant to speak, to take the conversation where he wants to instead of following the Sunshower where she dances off to, and the queen listens eagerly to what he has to say. Each word of Mirage rings in her head, each syllable betraying his disbelief in fairytale endings, and the queen tries to process it all. A smarter woman, the philosopher Dragomir expects, might ask what his past was if it did not include happy endings and friendship, but the queen was not the philosopher he had mistaken her for and had no capacity to make the connection between those statements. Perhaps it was better for Dragomir, though- he did not have to worry (yet) about her poking and prying, digging up a history he did not want to share.

But to call her the magic of the woods? Even the self-centered queen could not fathom that because she knew who made the woods magical, and it was certainly not her. “It's the Lady Moon that gives us our magic,” she murmured, but her head was far away, meandering through all the words that he had said, the way he had said them, the pause and the look in his eyes as he placed her on a pedestal far above the Edge's towering trees.

The queen was not shy to compliments, not afraid to take them and place them on herself, and before the wait was too long she added, “I can't help but shine while I wear this.” Still, there was a question in her words that she could not help but hide- a question she did not know she was asking. What exactly had he meant? Surely, they called her the Sunshower for a reason, but the girl did not see the reason for the tears, the odd tone, the melancholy memories. Had she thought of Kaj in that moment she might have known what secrets the paint held within him, might have figured out what secrets her own mind kept from herself. But she did not think of her king, did not think of her feelings for the pegasus, and Dragomir's secret was safe. “Smile, my friend. You should be happy, right?”