My hooves clattered against the familiar rocky pathway that would soon lead down into the high vaulted caverns of the Heart Caves. The cold of winter was left behind me along with the time that was intended to forge a new road ahead and had since failed. Instead of seeking the future, I’d been caught desperately in the past hoping to again find my eyes paralleled by those painted with the oceans blue. The warrior had lingered where others had rarely before been capable of reaching and from time to time I found myself trying to outrun his image in my head. However, like my father, he remained an integral piece of my understanding or more so just the missing link of a mystery I couldn’t let go. Romul had grown tired of my speculations and his irritation was apparent as we returned to the ever-infamous Heart. The cooler months had decorated its warming visage in white and painted the sharp, uniform crags of the cave’s face in lines of frozen, silver ice. Yet, none of that had want for my eyes; only the heated tunnels below could sway my favor until at last I revealed whether or not the warrior had spoken true.

My coat had grown thick since I’d first met the battle-beaten garron and his intelligent retriever beneath the crust of an earth so wild and burdensome, and now I feared that he would not find in me the same beauty as before. But of course that had been a crude assumption on my part… I’d been hoping that the image reflected in his eyes was a true likeness of myself and at first I’d been certain of the fact, but again time had changed everything. It always did.

Romul had moved ahead long before we’d reached the cave’s entrance and though I felt my heart flitting in my chest over an idea that held no permanence, his rumbling in my thoughts made it skip an excited beat. Essetia, he’d murmured not unlike so many times before, he’s here. I paused for a long while before resuming my ascent into the Heart, my breath hitched high in my throat so tight that I feared I would collapse before I’d even had the chance to ask the warrior’s name. My nerves had gotten the best of me many times before, but it was nothing like what I experienced when I thought of the scar-riddled man from the caves. The nights had made me into a giddy young girl, lost to her own fantasies and wonder, and the days were less than forgiving. I had joined the ranks of the Dragon’s Throat and I’d stormed their battlements from the very start. I’d stolen their Sleuth’s position and now I’d returned the victor by anyone’s standards. However, that drive had been born of impatience; the autumn leaves had changed so slowly and the cool blast of winter hadn’t come fast enough. Yet somehow the day had come and his promise had remained unbroken.

When at last the pale figure of Romul’s shoulders and stout head cut through my narrow view, I smiled tensely to myself. I was slow to trail his gaze toward the pair I’d only dreamt of since our first meeting, but when I’d uncovered the courage to do so, I couldn’t help the barefaced grin that stemmed at the sight of them. Again the retriever stood at her companion’s side and again Romul was hesitant to approach; everything was so different and yet so very much the same. “It’s you,” I nearly whispered upon approach. I was so amazed by how sharp the warrior appeared to be now; no longer was he a mere hazy image of the past. He was here, he was real, and he hadn’t lied. He hadn’t lied.

He hadn’t lied.