The one-winged mare longed for the return of his warmth, the steamy sprawl of his breath upon her quaking skin; the hot humid wind before a violent Tallsun storm. Air rasped in her parched throat and she gasped again still more quietly than the rap of mouse toes through the dew. The bold groove of his spine where it sank between folds of thick muscle felt as smooth as an egg's shell; still softer than the mushrooms she so often stole from the littered carpet of Deep Forest, and pale eyes clenched to savour the memory.

She would have liked so desperately to explore him, to fondle further the labyrinth of his rippling coat, run lips along the stark divide of black from white and flirt through swan-white feathers. Lungs inhaled deeply as she imagined their hue – still more elusive no doubt, than Lantern Foxes of the west. Perhaps she truly expected that at any moment the Gallant’s patience would tire of her lingering and redden with temper still hotter than fire. The Starry-Eyed had never pursued him so concernedly, so intimately, she was wading through writhing oceans of emotion; vulnerable like the plover that cleaned the crocodile’s teeth.

But Midas had never showed her such coldness; he had shouldered her grief just as often as she had his. He knew more of her secret heart than any other in Helovia.

The black tips of long ears peeked forward through the soundless crackle of flames, listening intently for the rhythm of his breathing; the sobering blanket of silence clung between them like fog. She wanted him to be alright, to unburden his mind; to remember her solace. Troubled eyes fixed their gentle hold upon his illuminated hide. Fire decorated his reluctance as frivolously as it had betrayed her heartache moments before. Africa felt instantly that her motion had been a risk worth taking, a bold venture to push right through the boundary that he had physically forced between them - she cared too deeply for him now to simply conform to the pleas of an ailing mind.

It pained her bitterly to see him so withdrawn, decrepit, and tainted by merciless family who it seemed had forsaken him too easily. She could only guess that it was the Constrictor’s cold grip stiffening its hold once again on the stallion’s fractured soul, the grim reality of loneliness that had been thrust upon him when children had vanished as though into the hand of Helovia’s Darkness... but it did not have to be that way forever. She wanted him to see. There would always be tomorrow; a future to amend. The Starry-Eyed remembered his despair though; all walls had crumbled in the glowing pit of the earth. She recalled every moment they had ever shared – and she needed not his depthless gaze to search.

He spoke... a line so flat it made her throat twist. He was wretched and wonderful, torn and together; she feared not the danger of disappointment.

Beneath the winking starlight Midas lifted, and lean white legs moved only to clear for him a path – an exit if he so wished. Lungs pulled a deep breath in to hold; clinging anxiously to floundering hope with every inch of her being. But he touched her instead and the air rushed suddenly from her body, gushing relief still wilder than a frothing river rapid. As he spurred trembling skin to sweat; the gleaming scar to throb, fond whiskered lips traced the hidden slip of leather where it peeked inconspicuously between cold metal and flesh.

“Don’t you remember?” she whispered dotingly after the low thrum of his voice had vanished; the caress of her eyes upon him was as delicate as the flush on a rose. “What is broken, can sometimes fly again... you told me that once.” A kind, quiet smile pulled at weary lips and she leaned comfortingly her finely-chiselled features against the spray of his silken white feathers. “I will never fly away...”