DRAGOMIR

He follows her lead, taking her gesture sincerely for once and without too much faltering on his behalf at the gentle pressure of her scaled body against his own. Large hooves stride even and powerful as they begin the journey home, his collection of vines dangling across thick and muscular shoulders as he stares ahead, occasionally glancing over to meet Semira’s eyes with his own.

He takes in her story of her aunt with an ear leaned in to catch each word, blue gaze twinkling in good humor and interest. He can almost picture her, after all the descriptions Semira has provided him, and the sight is something he is mildly envious of, and wishes he had been fortunate enough to have seen such a thing on his brief period of adventure. It settles well with him, however, that he has never been allowed such glimpses into the world of magic; after all, he might never have come to Helovia, which would mean he would have met none of those who had so greatly changed and enriched his life with their company and kindness, and he would not have been here to guide the princess home.

All in all, he found his life here honorable, and full of enough adventures on its own, even if they were small ones gathering flowers or conversing with pretty girls. He wouldn’t exchange it for anything, not even a chance to walk among dragons.

He already did that here, didn’t he? He looks over at the silvery girl alongside him, and smiles. Great, emerald queens of the skies could wait another day. His soul wasn’t done growing here, and his path had not ended. He could see more branches looming, just ahead; he would see to where they would take him, all the way to his ever after.

Her happiness is short lived, and he frowns with her, feeling perhaps more crestfallen than he should in the wake of how quickly her glimmer had faded because of his words. He listens to her description of her kin, knowing her words to be true in recollection of the girl he had met along the borders that afternoon; he’d thought the same thing then, looking at Amaris, how much more refined and mysterious she had been in comparison to the other daughter, carrying herself as a true Goddess of might and mystique rather than a benevolent and bubbling incarnation of bliss as her sister presented herself. He supposed it might have had something to do with the spirit wyverns that had rippled and writhed about the dark hearted daughter; the magic had aged her in ways that Semira could not compete with.

"I saw her in between the dead magic and the darkness. It may be that she chose to wait for safety elsewhere," he offers, pulled into the memory of that wonderful time of peace after the wall had been completed, a time that seemed much more beautiful in retrospect than it had at the time; he was slowly recovering from the darker events that had occurred in the Grove, and it allowed him to look back and see through the anguish he’d suffered through. So many had been there helping to build the wall that he hadn’t seen since the plague had lifted and the Gods had restored the land to health, and it saddened him to recall them almost as much as it gave him hope that he would see those times again if he remained with the Edge.

The gentle touch of her wing restores him to the present, misty gaze finding her for a fleeting moment before returning to the path. He listens to her façade of strength, almost believing that she has this more together than he does until the very end, how her voice breaks and she visibly droops beneath the weight of her loneliness in a place that had once held only friends. He reaches over to tousle the locks of silvery mane between her ears if she allows the touch as a way of saying, “keep your chin up,” though he himself is unsure how to deal with the changes he’s been presented with.

"Kahlua and Kaj lead the World’s Edge now," he says, trying to remember all the names and faces that had been at the meeting, the titles they had belonged to, "maybe they know something, and they definitely would like to know that Smoke and the others are safe." The only one of them all he’s ever met aside from Semira herself is the Wild Rose, the only name he feels comfortable repeating without having a distinct mental image to place to it.

He’s a strange boy.

"They’re holding a competition for Captain, at the moment, but Quilyan was promoted to Specter at the meeting after we came up from the caves," he turns to her suddenly beaming, his forward motion halted as he realizes he hadn’t had a chance to tell her about himself, "and Aaron and I became Glaziers!" Most proudly, his head is raised and his ears lie partly down on his straight features, smile gleaming on dark lips as his chest presses forward and his neck arches. He’s not exactly sure why he’s so excited to tell her at first until it hits him.

He has had not other friends to tell this to that were not already at the meeting.

His pride quite suddenly deflates though the smile lingers (newfound pride in that he has a single soul to have shared his promotion with), his limbs returning to their forward march in dismay of his millionth realization that he is much more lonely than he feels most days.

@[Semira]
[ OOC: Semira first, then others are welcome to pop in and say hello! ]

CrafteR

world's edge

DRAGOMIR

Nodding to her gentle murmur of Kaj’s full title, he himself ponders what precisely he feels about the newest male to take charge of the band in the misty wood. He doesn’t really know him, that’s for sure, but he’s not the proper species for Dragomir to entirely know how to predict his leadership abilities, his mind not well suited for understanding that there was little difference between leaders; there were only two kinds, after all, he just hadn’t come to that realization. Either way, the closeness that he sensed between the Stormbringer and his darling Kahlua was enough to rouse the green devils of envy in his chest, beasts he did his best to subdue.

The Sunshower was not his, at least not in anymore ways than she belonged to all of the Edge, and he had sworn long ago that he wouldn’t allow himself to succumb to his emotions and drag her into his pit with him. He had been taught about fate, and love; he knew that one could not hunt these things, merely linger on a path until it stumbled from the brush before you.

It did not make his frustrations any less intense, his muddled mindset on the rulers of his home set aside for the time to care for the last piece of the life he had first agreed to in this land.

Everything else, as it always was, had been fate. He consigned himself to these facts.

She pauses with him, her eyes bright with enthusiasm, and it fuels the smile that lingers on his lips. With pride abundant, he nods in agreement to her inquiries. "Well, yes, I suppose," he states, having never had the thought of making something as massive as the wall until now (never mind it had been his first experiences with the glass maker’s power), "I’ve only made a harness for Kahlua, some shoes for a guy named Tyradon. I don’t know if I’m talented enough to accomplish anything massive as the wall yet."

Her next question leaves him stumped, not a name available in all his repertoire of names to offer her. Begrudgingly, he admits as much to her, sensing a brightness in the question that meant his answer would bring more sadness to her vibrant features. "No one, that I know," he says, apologetically glancing to his companion as they enter into the gleaming fields bordering the Threshold, leading down into the Thistle Meadow, "though we have two Moon Doctors. I’m sure the Lady Moon is too busy caring for the havoc the wraiths brought to be concerned with mortal inquiries, anyway… perhaps why she has not selected one to communicate with."

CrafteR

world's edge

DRAGOMIR

Her question is met with silence, at first; he has many things he’d like to make, to be sure, but there are no specifics that immediately rise to his mind. Perhaps he’ll wander about searching for trinkets to work with for a while, maybe meeting a few others along the way who shared his passion or desired a small token of his work in exchange for things that might benefit his herd. More than particular items there are theories that circulate in his mind, ideas that weave and ripple against another, simply waiting for the right time to be tested. "I’m hoping to test the limits of the magic. How meager or strong one can make the glass, the depth of color that can be added to it, the shapes it is confined into. Things like that," he explains; Kahlua had few answers to these questions when he’d asked them, only what she knew from experience, and all the Glaziers before her were dead, gone, or so elusive that he couldn’t hope to learn from them. That left him with only himself, and while it was lonely as his usual endeavors, he looked forward to them immensely, his gleaming enthusiasm writ on his face as he discusses his desires for the magic he has been blessed with.

The name she pairs with that of the seer is unknown to him, no faces rising to meet his mind’s eye. His frown is evident, explaining as much with a glance if the one looking is skilled at determining such things. "I’ve never even heard of her," he says slowly, ears slipping down again in his lack of knowledge, that someone so important had never been sighted or whispered of near him, "she’s had to have been gone since before Mirage and the others disappeared. Maybe the Moon told her what was coming." He grows silent, remembering the way the land had been shredded into pieces, the people walking its surface hideous and disfigured, families shattered and trust ruptured into shards finer than silt. "I can’t blame anyone for running," he concludes with a shudder, forcing the images back into a dark urn of memory.

He glances over at her as she stretches her wings, blue eyes catching the light that ricochets off of her scales with the same wonder he always meets her Goddess like form with. He still isn’t entirely sure what it is that rushes through him when he catches the wyvern details of the girl, whether it is purely horror or purely awe or a mixture somewhere between them both; all he knows for sure is that he cannot look away from her with any ease. Nodding in reply to her words, so timely placed after his darker mentioning prior, he smiles faintly, letting some of her hope and innocence bleed into his heart. "Normal enough," he says, smiling, "the Dragoness Mirage bred unity among us. A change of leadership has not shattered the peace we find with each other, perhaps only made it stronger." He slips into thoughts of the flow and function of the Edge, how projects still forged onwards and the herd seemed to remain strong even after loosing so many in the darkness; the powerful had been replaced by the rising strength that had grown beneath their mighty boughs, and while their roots now decayed in the soil, it fed that which had dropped from its fruits.

All was well, he decided, and it lightened his mood exponentially. "Kahlua is boundlessly kind. Kaj, as I can tell, is hundreds of times more stoic than Kahlua on her most serious day, but wise." There is reservation in his voice as he discusses the new winged leader of their fold, still unsure whether or not he can fully place trust in someone not bred from greatness and thus destined for so. Still, that he is willing to give time for the man to truly prove himself speaks volumes for how he has changed and grown since Semira and he last met; his allegiance on first arriving to Helovia would have never been sewn to a man such as Kaj, no matter his deeds or valor. It was not the way of the Steadfast, and had not been the way of his son.

How things have changed, he muses, glancing again at sweet Semira alongside him.

CrafteR

world's edge

DRAGOMIR

That she seems not only interested but highly curious in his projects is nice, bolstering his ego in ways that didn’t usually happen for the young stallion. It wasn’t that he necessarily lacked confidence in his craft or the theories that circulated in his head, it was nice to know that others help enthusiasm to mirror his own when discussing the confines and extremities of magic. He supposes he shouldn’t be that surprised – Semira was raised in the Edge, after all, likely having seen many Glaziers pass through the misty wood, each with their own talents and love for their home, and surely the sight of the glass reminds the girl of her home as it will forever remind him of the cliffs bordering the sea, the glass wall and the woman who built it.

The bright tones of her words wash over him, head bobbing in agreement that the thinner glass was far less complex than that which could withstand blows. She asks about color, and a second nod replies yes, he has utilized color in a project, his mind recalling the harness he’d made for Kahlua and the way the flowers had tinted the glass surrounding them. There were a couple he had back home in his clearing that had too deeply absorbed the color of the petals, loosing the translucent sparkle he had been aiming for in the piece; perhaps he could show Semira when they returned, if she was interested in such things.

When she asks about sound, however, his ears rise and his face turns to her with a new interest burning in its depths, the idea of a musical object having entirely escaped his thoughts. "I don’t know much about sound," he admits aloud, pondering the idea of an instrument that a beginner in the field of music could accomplish, "though I imagine the density of the object has something to do with the notes it makes, along with over-all size. It would be a good project to practice thinning techniques, to be sure." He’s only guessing, but he’s been in enough caves to know that the smaller ones echoed more loudly than large ones, and struck enough rocks to know that pumice sounded totally different than slate.

She returns to Hellena, describing the mare and drawing from him a silent and ponderous state as he walks through the fields, having only been to one meeting under Mirage and quietly shuffling through the faces that had been there. He recalled Aaron, his fellow Glazier, Alysanne and Resplendence, the gardeners, Destrier, the missing soldier, among numerous others he had no names for. When he really sat down to thinking about it, Semira’s father had been there as well…

But there had been no pale unicorn with an aura of wisdom among them, only a young spritely damsel with dark hair he’d come to know as Nyx, and while she was not a fool, she was no Seer of the Moon, either. He shakes his head no in response. "The only meeting I recall under the Queen of Dragons was in the early fall after the summer we built the wall. The only female unicorn among the gathering was Nyx." A soft smile slips across his lips under the recollection of the massive number of equines that resided under the Dragonheart’s wings, finding great pride in the equine Queen’s ability to draw her kin to her.

He wonders, only briefly, if Kahlua will be able to do the same.

The conversation slips back to the Edge as it is now, not ghosts who haunt memories and hearts. He takes in her words about Kaj and files them away in the properly labeled folder, still waiting before officially deciding how he felt about the King. The cheer and luster in her voice, however, sent flags up within himself that warned he had sweetened her spirit too much towards what they were walking towards, having realized that she had seen next to nothing of what had come to pass, lovingly shielded for the horror by the adults who wore the hideousness of that burden so that she might remain innocent, and sweet as she had been before the darkness.

Begrudgingly, he settles into the resolution that she must be disillusioned; it won’t do for her to be running about expecting to find the same smiling faces. Those that were familiar to her had been forever changed, he himself included in that roster, and he had witnessed and experienced far less than some of the others.

He was still alive, for one.

"Many died, Semira, no matter how well the Gods have repainted the land," he says, seriousness writ across his face as he looks to her, he himself having witnessed the death of a few during the times of trouble and not wanting her to underestimate the seriousness of what had come to pass, the reality that many she loved and could not find may never return at all, "the Edge has not seen many of our fold return and many that have are changed by what they have seen or done. Mirage and Lace vanished in the same week, and the Edge was lost in a matter of days; I know this because I took a walk to the tundra with your mother, my Queen, still ruling our home and returned in three days to find not a soul within the wood but those which had been corrupted by the illness. Within a week, all who remained of the living were underground, hiding like rats from the burning hooves of a God." He pauses, a lapse of silence as he recalls the horrors sweeping across Helovia’s chest, sighing at the naïve nature of her hope and that he is destroying it. " I wish I could assume they all found safety, as you did…but I am not a fool. I saw what came to take our kingdom. Those… things. They were as fast as wind and far more clever, claiming most they came into contact with quickly and without hesitation or remorse. Family slain by family, lovers devoured by their children and children bloodied by their father’s hooves."

He remembers his talk with Ranjiri in this same meadow, his brows furrowing together in frustration that so much evil had come down on them for seemingly no reason other than to toy with their emotions. "Imagine it, Semira; you must if you are to understand the way things are now, the burdens some of us carry. Watching your body kill and maim all that you love as you scream silently from within, finding pleasure in the act even as you weep in sorrow and outrage against what is happening."

He pauses in his step to look at her with a kind face, one that tries to help her understand that he does this for everyone, not just to wound her hope. "Understand that the World’s Edge of your childhood is no more, and many of your friends and family may not be the same; your mother’s rule has fallen, and all that stands are its bones. You’ll see it more clearly once we reach the wall."

What he meant by that, of course, was that while the wall was still present, it was weathered and chipped, no longer grand and impenetrable as it had been; that such a massive thing had been so swiftly demolished was all the evidence of proof in his words he needed, that the wall still stood was all anyone could desire to prove that their spirit, while weathered, still burned and resonated.

CrafteR

world's edge

DRAGOMIR

He smiles as she adds to his immediate thoughts on musical objects, her reference to the weight of his hooves in comparison to her own clever and knitting a deeper fondness in his heart for the little dragon child. She was her mother’s daughter, that was sure; he’d never spoken to her dad to know if he was as wise and full of wit as the Dragonheart, and he supposed it didn’t matter. Semira was female; it was of his belief that daughters tended to follow along their mother’s path more so than their father’s, and vice versa for young boys, even in such a situation as the Silver Dragon alongside him had been born into. Some might think she would be more like her sire, for she wore his natural armor and wings, but Dragomir saw so much of Mirage in every movement and word that fell from the child that it was hard to deny her lineage was that of the Moon’s favored queen.

Surely, Mirage never giggled and laughed so much, but she was also a mother and a ruler and much more aged than Semira at the time Dragomir had met her. Perhaps, once, the black lady of the mists had once been as enthusiastic about life as her daughter, or perhaps she had always been as she was then and as her other child, Amaris, behaved.

He does not know; he does know, however, that the way Semira is makes her much more inviting than her solemn sister.

"I think I might take you up on that offer," he says with slight cheek, his grin mirthful on black lips.

He nods in accordance with her statement that she does not know Nyx; he only knows her because she seemed to flit around like a social butterfly meeting everyone she could as far as he could tell, but he hadn’t seen the unicorn mare in a while now that he really thought about it. It made him wonder where she might be, if she was lost with Lace and Mirage. "She hasn’t lived there long. She arrived with an older unicorn stallion, maybe her father. I don’t know his name. White and black, bloody red eyes, quite serious and foreboding in his mannerisms…" he chuckles, glancing almost playfully at his travel companion, "I’ve made sure to avoid him."

As the mood grows dark, he slips from his unusual cheer into more common place somberness, dark rimmed ears hovering dismally atop his crown that bobs easily with his steps. If he could come to see the world and himself as Semira could, perhaps these conversations and events would weigh more easily on him; as he stands now, all he knows to do is avoid the topic of the darkness at all costs with those that had seen it and to tenderly tip toe about the issue whenever it is brought up, as it had been with Ranjiri. He cannot see the world as Semira does, not yet, anyway, as a sort of phoenix that burns and writhes before being reborn more powerful and gleaming than before; he cannot see himself as a mortal man, flawed yet flawless, a being crafted of earth and pure ivory, coated in a veneer of darkness.

He is clever, but a fool. It is so with most young men.

Her hope scalds him as she turns her draconic stare to him, the words ringing with truth that he nods his head in reply to, stuck nearly numb by the simple reality that hung in her syllables. Her final words rang with the most truth to him, so staggered by what she had said that he quietly and without a thought accepted that he had just been berated by a girl much younger than himself.

"I hope your right," he says, returning his eyes to the sway of his limbs progressing forward with faint notice that the sun was falling from the horizon, hiding the way his features gleamed with sorrow when he thought of how deeply he truly did hope that Mirage would return with the others as the fading light cast its bleak glow across his lowered face. Not that he truly cared so much if everyone else came back – he mostly wanted his moral guide back. Without her, he felt as if he would continuously flail in the moral grounds of his herd, unable to come up for a breath of air in her company as he always had, and the thought frightened him.

Truly, it was only that he’d never truly gone without any sort of mother so long as Mirage was around; he’d met her so early into his arrival to Helovia that the wise and nurturing ways of the black queen had quickly swept him to her side, holding him fast to her as a parental buffer between himself and the world, no matter how much he wanted to discard that theory. The core of his fear stemmed from his loneliness, his lack of a maternal shield; but it also grew from his own fears of failing to become anything more than a pile of bones with no name.

CrafteR

world's edge

DRAGOMIR

He enjoys the silence as they walk together, so accustomed to the chatty women he seemed to always find himself in the company of that walking side by side with such long pauses between words was refreshing, the dragon girl very much like her ancient bloodline in that she filled every void with silent words that read in every detail of her frame. Being near her makes him miss his home of youth, the serpentine white beaches framing the dense and beautiful forests of trees far stranger than those that grew here, but most importantly, he misses his comrades, the massive gathering of dragons that kept him from growing too lonely on his adventures and during his daily life. From his experiences with the flashing rainbow of wyverns, he would have came to the same conclusion as Semira’s father; the gold and bronze beasts tended to be more regal in nature, less likely to play and let their emotions flit and flicker across their bodies so obviously.

They never, ever tried to play, at least not after they’d reached any sort of maturity. While he remembers Israfel with much fondness, he also does not remember any time that he spent with the dragon that had not consisted of his mother sweetly translating the thoughts that passed between she and her darling bronze, usually stories or lessons disguised as stories. Israfel liked telling tales and truths, and Requiem had told her son that it was due to the fact that it made him feel wise and important.

Dragomir wasn’t sure if that was a better description of his mother as much as it was for her dragon.

”Will you run with me?” she asks, and a fleeting image of Kahlua’s frame dashing towards the edge of the sea fills his mind before he blinks and it is gone. The touch of her lips draws his eyes towards her, a smile slipping across his lips as she promises not to use her wings and explains that she only walks for his comfort. It’s a thought that hasn’t ever really crossed his mind, that the sky would be faster than the forest, and he feels sort of foolish for only realizing it now; after all, his father had used his bonded many times to scout ahead of his position or to spy on a nearby wanderer without announcing the presence of the fallen king and his bride and children. What other reason would it have proved a useful tactic if flight was not swift, and efficient?

"You didn’t have to walk with me," he states, his smile still light on his lips though he feels somewhat guilty for slowing her down on her quest to return home; it means something to him, though, that she had chosen to walk with him and share her tales, to discuss with him of all people what had gone on while she had been absent. It meant he had spared her these conversations with her kin, and for that, he felt he had done well, even if her return was slightly delayed by his inability to fly.

Not that he’d truly want that power, anyway. It seemed a horrible means of transportation, hovering ever so many meters above the earth with only the wind and thin, flimsy looking appendages to hold one there.

His dark tail whips loosely around his body and bites at a flank as he snorts and prances forward a pace, sinew rippling in preparation for the brisk run that will close the distance between here and the fading wall. "But a run sounds nice," he chuckles gently between his words, "last one there is a fetid dragon egg!"

His conclusion is a shout that trails out behind his already moving form, laughter trailing from his lips at the unfair start to the race and Semira’s assumed determination to beat him (she was a dragon after all, wasn’t she? And no dragon anywhere liked to lose.).

CrafteR

world's edge