Courage wasn’t a game that she could play at anymore, expecting nothing wrong to come dripping, oozing out of the cracks that it laid into her frail, glass walls that shattered beneath the gentlest blow when deployed by the correct heart, mind, soul and body. Sikeax wasn’t young anymore. Or well, in that way. There were no longer times where she could afford to be naive.
Sikeax had simply grown poor in the wealth of what had once more her so real, so full of life that it burst and ruptured from the seams, bleeding from her with a warm glow of happiness, now only to be replaced by the mournful feeling of death. Life drained itself from her in the form of humanity.
Yet, as if he was made only to insult her, Hobgoblin blazes, a wildfire of everything that she could never be, right before her face and a part of her that is so separate and far away that she could never touch it with her weak fingers.
But because she cannot touch him does not mean he cannot send her a spark, drenched in the gasoline of his pity, watching amused red eyes as she tries. Oh, how she tries.
His laughter drowns out her scared, frightened words from being heard within her mind, ignorant of their escape to reality as they tremble out from her lips into the harsh world. Ranjiri’s acknowledgement of her adds a drop of gasoline to the gifted spark. Red eyes of the beast throw water over her puny fire and extinguish it before it can even manage to flourish.
Something about him makes her want to turn and flee. Something about his size and how small she feels before his might, for once, feeling insignificant in the presence of a giant when all she ever felt in the presence of the only giant she has ever known was self-confidence and happiness, a love for a friend that only comes when you can tell they truly care for you. Its probably how his voice rolls out of him like a rock slide ripping apart the side of a mountain. How those red eyes look so much like blood, a thing she’s supposed to be almost immune to the sight of.
Hobgoblin reminds her with a quick stab of his barbed tail, piercing her neck hard enough that it drags her back to the beach, forcing her to face the consequences of her actions head on. A wince slips over her face and lights up under the glow of her horn.
”I have a key.” The words whisper out of dry lips in a dull tone, attempting to make them sound void of all the terror that she currently battles with when she finally let’s them go.
She can’t help but feel insulted and wounded at the words that come out of the stallion’s mouth next, or maybe that’s Hobgoblin, taking the wheel again and steering her into a place she isn’t ready to venture into just yet. Blue eyes stare, actually glare towards him. Could she not stop him from entering the herd? Gaucho wouldn’t approve of it, but the treatment that was given towards Ranjiri and her left her in the stupid, selfish idea of forgetting that he did have a right to join. Ranjiri hadn’t walked back from the Threshold with him only for Sikeax to turn him away at the gates, and for sure, the winged mare probably didn’t offer up a home for this to occur.
If Sikeax had actually known of all the things she’d ever done, then there was a chance that she probably wouldn’t want to even look into the eyes of the mare, burdened by embarrassment by the idea that she had probably gone ahead and made her life difficult many times over.
The least she could do was accept him after all of the hard work done.
As she snorts, Hobgoblin lifts his head, settling his wings along his side and clutching harder onto his bonded’s forelock, fluttering out a purr in the depths of his throat. ”I think….” Words form a harsh knot in her windpipe and find themselves stuck in the process of trying to make their way out. ”....we’ll go into the Throat together.” Her voice is so weak, so frail that it feels just as brittle as the bones of an elder, ready to break out of fear but driven on with the reminder that change must come and that she has changed in how she almost attacked a stranger over her love for her brother, that change might bring something good.
Her steps towards them are slow, frightened yet driven to go on with how Hobgoblin threatens her with the physical fury of his rage if she cannot push herself further. Shivers bolt across her skin, and whether they be driven by the cold air of late Frostfall or the feelings the dark stud drives into her, the only thoughts she can think of right now is how nice it might be to be engulfed in fire.
She can’t stop herself from feeling weak when her blue eyes meet his red eyes in passing, listening in as Hobgoblin releases a series of clicks and chirps as if to tease his opponent. He boils her waters in the desperate need for his hate to flow out from her jaws, to say things that he can’t spill, but what she surely can.
At least, she can offer him one little thing.
”Hobgoblin wants me to tell you something.” The urge to shut up now rises again, reminded of all the things that make her fear him when she has come up close to offer him entrance. She cannot funnel her mate's emotions into her tone of voice. He is such a different being that she could never do his words justice, feel the whole feelings that he feels when what she receives from him is like emotions made into vodka, putting her under his influence when she prays that for once she could feel them raw.
Just for this.

”He thinks you’re rude and need to learn respect, but I think you and him are just the same type of people.”
Fear morphs into an inferno in her chest, because there's that fire she wanted before. Its not exactly the right kind of burning that she wanted, now left in anticipation of what punishments she would be dealt for acting in such a fashion.

OOC: You can pretty much consider him accepted whenever they cross over the bridge, which you can write out in your reply if that works best. Sikeax has agreed to take him across and I'm fine with her being PP for their ride over.

talk talk talk