Grass is sweet on his lips when it touches his ears: dragon song. Every muscle in his body seizes as his aurels lift and pale azures widen. For a few moments he is still, hide trembling with restraint, the only sign of the internal struggle he is suddenly faced with. It is not the first time he has imagined such sounds, when he was still agonizing over Mirage's disappearance and Vikram's departure with their foals. They were illusions every time, echoes of a time he both desperately wishes to return to and is repulsed by. Yet he chased them every time, hoping with every step that maybe this time it would be real, that the DragonHeart had returned at last. Though he was King of these lands, it was Mirage he had pledged himself to long ago, when he was a quiet and unassuming brute, and even when he was the newly ranked confident WingLeader at her side. Time had changed them all. He had lost his beloved Lead, and Destrier, his brother in arms and the finest WingLead he'd ever had the pleasure of working alongside. Gained so much in return...but was it worth the sacrifices he'd been forced to make?

His hesitance cannot keep him from investigating, from hoping. It is dragon song for sure, but it is...different from Mirage's feminine draconian lyrics. Heart beat faster, a wild hope budding in his mind. Perhaps...one of the twins had returned home? Even if he ended up chasing another flickering delusion, the golden king could not refrain from finding out. All at once he broke into motion, turning and loping towards the group that had gathered while he had suffered over chasing yet another potential dream. He arrives with a heavy staccato of hoofbeats, winding through the trees and through the throng of those gathered to lay eyes almost wildly upon the dragon child. He took a breath in, felt and heard it hitch in his throat, and murmured her name.

"Semira..."

Memories played in his mind, a reel of distorted color and sounds, vibrant and chaotic but memorable and cherished all the same. Two glittering babes whom he had watched over on multiple occasions, and yet had never gotten the chance to watch grow or become closer to. Platonic, loving smiles from a maw as dark as night, and deep chuckles paired with brotherly shoves from a dragon boy who Kaj had shared his many days and far more patrols with. The filly had been in his care both directly and indirectly, the once-WingLeader always attentive and alert, not doubting the abilities of the sire and dam but ready to protect them at any given moment. She was hardly a filly anymore, budding into adulthood with just as much splendor as her dam, and it hurt Kaj's heart to know he'd missed so much of the life of the fae he might have once helped raise in a timeline he did not belong to.

He is so shocked as to nearly stumble towards the small doe, but he cares naught for the views and judgments of those gathered, seeing in her eyes the same tiny foal he had once, in what felt like a lifetime past, been a shared guardian of. Pale golden maw extended to her, inhaling her scent while he is near, eyes soft like clear noon summer skies as he silently invites her to reunite with him in the briefest manner he can stand with the crowd around them. "Thank the Gods above...you are safe," he murmured, words meant only for her aurels, though he cared little if the others happened to catch it.

Laughing softly he draws away, whether she has reciprocated or not, and tries to choke down the knot in his throat at seeing her so beautiful and grown. "Why, I haven't seen you since you were but a babe, hardly even to my knees!" Crown shakes in sincere disbelief, for in her face he finds a familiar stranger, changed with time but still the same silently inquisitive foal that had always evaded his understanding like a playful kitten in the time he'd known her. Smile creased his lips and he shuffled his wings, heart feeling far more at ease. "Welcome home, Semira. We have missed you." I have missed you.

She had been so young...did she even remember him?