She wondered why the dragon was so angry - at her, or at the world - as it snarled and glared at the tigermare with an ugly face. Then again, she remembered through a shrewd whispery voice in her head that this was not the first time companions didn't enjoy her company. She grumbled under her breath as she turned her burgundy shaded eyes back to the thundering veil; dark with its luminous claws. Unlike the monstrous unsteady lightning, her halo pouted softly and subtly in a perfect circle above her head, a tear of liquid light dropping to the ground once a year. But in the silence that kept hanging between her, the girl with the dragon and the rumbling sky, her earlier spoken question seemed to have been lost in the vapor clouds rising from the warm sand.

Did it really matter? Wasn’t it just a wasted attempt to not pretend? Just for once?

But then a voice did sound and the tigermare glanced sideways to seek out the healers gaze, only to find - even here, too - some kind of storm in silvery eyes. The girl had made some kind of rude sound before she began talking, and Maren somehow wondered if she had been the charcoal for the speech echoing ‘remorse’ against the waters of her mind. But she couldn’t be the cause of her angst; her harsh words, because she had barely said anything yet. She realized it was either assuming that, or she would have to start wondering what she had damned to do right this time. Once again, the priestess found herself concluding that she needed to stop trying to care, keep herself be as she was. Because when she didn't try, at least she did not have to pretend to find sympathy for every rotten leaf falling with tears weighing it down to the ground. Grief was meant to happen sooner or later, as it was a part of life, so she wouldn’t judge the grieving, but neither would she lick away their tears.

So the priestess’ silent eyes wandered off to look at the landscape once again as she let the girl talk, her words washing past her hide, like the rain continued to do. Because her coat was already soaked; and the boldest of words could not rip open her thick skin. Still, the landscape did not hold the answers she had soughed, like the visions in the fire had shown no answers for the mare she had said she would help; Ampere. Blame it on me. For she had cared - and she had failed.

But the healer seemed troubled, pained - angry. So even though she, logically speaking, could not be the cause of it all, perhaps she still was.

Either way her mind did not care; her mind was the Loyal, the Logic and foremost: The Prepared, for right now she was, mentally. So the tigermare finally looked back to the face of the healer, and the face of the tigermare-disliking dragon, and gazed at them with silent sorry-eyes under the hood of two feathered wings; still folded into a cap around her crown to keep the rain out of her face. You seem troubled, but I can trade you nothing more than my remorse for that.

And it wouldn’t be enough; rarely was anything enough.

It left her lips not entirely sure what she wanted to reply to the girl. But, for what it was worth, she didn’t felt the need to scold her rudeness, either, for some reason. So she simply mumbled: “Only one...” and waited out the rest of her story.

There hadn’t been many refugees seeking a safe haven, but perhaps they would still come, one day. Hungry and bitter, unforgiving and forlorn… Perhaps. But even the diviner that she was could not foresee who would and who wouldn’t follow the river down south - and she wasn’t sure if she even wanted to know. So those words, too: She let them run past her conscience and dissolve in the rain.

Still, for some reason she heard herself offering her help - her care, nevertheless. Right after the words had rolled out of her mouth she swallowed, wished she had done so earlier so she could’ve taken back-in the words. But in the Healer’s eyes something changed. And Maren glared at it, hoping to understand what it was - but like always unable to read faces like some others could.

In the back of her mind still cursing her loose-tongue, she thought about the girl's proposals. Most things she mentioned she already did. After all; she was the Dragon Throat’s one and only self-proclaimed Water Patrol. But somehow she was afraid that saying that out-loud would make it sound stupid. Still, these days much was stupid, illogical - flawed, and if it wasn’t yet, it would soon be. Like this.

“As the Throat’s Diviner I will do whatever I can,” Maren finally said, following protocol, just before a lightning bolt split the world in two and took the sounds of her outlandish voice with it.

A screech resounded in her ears, derived from the girl’s dragon's’ throat. Maren glanced with a growing frown above her eyes as she suddenly remembered what it was that she came here for. “But I am curious about you,” So she began, eyes crowning a smile that had seemed to curl up in, well, not a lot of time at all. “I don’t want to be vague about this, so can I just point out that standing underneath the only tree in a desert and letting a dragon fly in this shitty weather is - perhaps, if I may say,” and she was saying it, a slight frown upon her brow. “A fool’s thing to do?” She said with a steady grip on her foreign tongue, perhaps sounding like she was really still questioning it. But truthfully, she simply wanted to get rid of this strange, undeserved tension between a priestess and a healer. (Where was the need for it in times like this?) With one feathery wing she pointed towards a large rock formation, looking nothing but suspicious against the dark charged skies, the low vapor clouds and the blur of the falling rain. “Let’s go there instead.”



"Talking." @[Sikeax]

Maren