The coolness with which he defers my arrogant fury is deflating.

It makes me feel stupid, which keeps the ember of my anger alive, but only just; the harshness that has lined my figure until now eases slightly, my golden eyes softening as I come to regret the suddenness of my tongue. I don’t apologize. It’s not really in my nature to care if I’ve wounded the feelings of a stranger, even if he is a herd mate.

Instead, I stand quietly and let him talk, my tail still curling about behind me much like a cats when annoyed as he instead pauses to touch the between the knobby antlers of his young companion. I’d spent enough time around other creatures to know he doesn’t like me very much - I’m not really sure if I should care.

He tells me he’s the Haruspex, which makes my eyebrows rise – not only because I didn’t really expect him to have been someone of as much importance as that, but because he ironically resembles, in ways, the last man I knew to hold that position. I can’t help but wonder what the Time God thinks of his luck, having not only had one funny looking, small stallion as his seer, but two.

Perhaps, I think to myself, there is some correlation with being maimed and having a deeper insight in the realm of the spirit, and the intangible.

I think I would rather be as I am, if that is the case.

These thoughts distract me from the rest of his statement, which I find myself having to piece back together in retrospect in the seconds following the pause of his words. The ember of my anger flashes brightly, but does not catch.

"Perhaps because the last meeting which I attended was overseen by my mother," I say with narrowed eyes, looking upon the bihued stallion with some measure of daring, my ears still held in a position of hostility but my tone more defiant than angry, as they had been before, "another wore your title then."

I challenge him to deny the truth of my words with an unbroken stare. I can throw fancy titles around too, see?

He says he is sorry if he startled me. I don’t know if I believe him, and surely I am not going to admit as much to the uselessly horned man before me. Looking away from him after a rather visible twinge of my face, I find myself lying, a low rumble of words breaking from my lips.

"You didn’t," is my remark, looking back at him for the first time with my ears raised, rather than reversed in memory of the sudden outrage that had filled me upon being startled and mocked. I don’t want him leaping in afterwards with an accusation that I’ve been untruthful, and quickly jump in with further conversation, trying to lighten the tension in the air which almost crackles around us.

"You don’t look like much of a fighter," I say, running my eyes over his slender build and his short stature, his dangling blade almost the least of his physical concerns when it comes to combat; maybe its rude, but its true, and I have never been one to curb my words for the sake of another’s feelings.

He stands there in the door, taking in all my youthful pride and biting words with the frosty wind to his back, tousling his bihued hair about his slender body. I feel the sweat that has built upon my flesh grow chilly as my heart ebbs in its pace, I can feel each touch of the breeze as it slips past him in this unwarranted waste of time; he smells like smoke, I just now notice.

At first, he answers me with a glare, which is soon followed by words, words which I take in and reply to with a soft smirk, mostly because it is how anyone answers such a childish, hopeful notion.

An idealist, I think to myself, nearly laughing at him in mockery for the foolishness of his statement. What a wonderfully safe world it would be if the desire to be a warrior made one truly powerful. I let my eyes slip across his slender body again, knowing from my slender experience in the field of combat how easily those bones would break without a coating of muscle to protect them, how small he is in comparison the brawny strength of men truly built to bring others to their knees, and I let the touch of my eyes answer his sarcasm with a coldness that reads how little I care for his theological nonsense.

I have grown among the strong, consider myself to have grown into one of the strong. I know my own when I see them.

His companion paces. I glance at him, not noticing that he is uncomfortable, only looking long enough to find no threat in his movement, and swiftly return my eyes to the larger of the strangers.

My smirk grows cold, my youthful face frowning and my golden eyes meeting him without flinching. Furen had been advanced in his talents and a great teacher, and he was not soft on me. There were times I was sure I wouldn’t be able to walk in the morning, so deep were the bruises he’d left on my body (and yet, somehow, each day I rose, I rose to take his challenge, and eventually, I became eager to meet him on the field, and to deliver the bruises that once I had only earned). While I wear no scars, the laws of the Nightwalk having forbid my tutor from breaking my skin, I have paid my dues.

That this Ashamin suggests a warrior can be made with “honor” makes the ember in my chest flare, so much so that I miss a similar rising in the Haruspex's black eyes. My gaze feels molten as I feel my hooves move beneath me, taking a step closer, then another.

Leave it to a philosopher to speak of things he knows nothing of.

"Now, isn’t that an idea," I answer with as much sass as I’ve given most of this conversation, my eyes rolling sarcastically as my words close, "to claim victory with resolve, that no man ever dies while being honorable! I might have saved so many hours of training if only I’d known.”

I’m being impetuous, and I know it. My mother would have already knocked my lights out. That this man hasn’t only further proves he is no warrior. He stands in the cold touch of the wind and uses words to uphold the respect he should demand with his sinew.

My skin is trembling. I realize that I can’t tell whether its from the cold, or from the tension that I have allowed to wrap tightly around my brain, strangling out most of my finer thoughts.

His companion shifts again.

I was going to open my mouth to continue my rebuttal (something about how, if he was a fighter, then I was a pretty lady with flowing pink locks) when I notice the movement. I’m no good at this guessing thing like mother was, and puzzle for the briefest of seconds over his strange motions. Is it fear that moves him, or the cold? Perhaps it is a will to defend…

The thought inspires shame; I was taught - I have striven - to be bigger than this.

My eyes shift away from the bonded pair and move towards the floor, which is covered in a fine veneer of eddying snow that dances in the wind, a transparent ribbon of ethereal ice. It’s so strikingly beautiful, so stunningly different from the tumult of emotions that rages through me in its graceful serenity. It is a shame to soil such beauty with anger, to threaten it with the sticky warmth of blood.

I am just so… so very tired, at least my heart; my body is very much awake, fueled by the endless ribbon of my thoughts. I shouldn’t be so ruthless towards him; he didn’t chase mother away, get me lost, lose my friends, cause the blizzard, or ask to be a part of the change that had startled me so much; he didn’t even really do anything to me at all, at least not on purpose.

I meet his face again, breath a long, heavy sigh, trying to let most of my hot anger escape with it.

"Look," I say slowly, trying to force my voice to remain even (though I still find I would rather shout at him), "it’s been a long day for me, okay?"

The closest thing to an apology he’s going to get.


[ OOC: omg it has taken forever to get this thing out. :| *kicks rikyn out the window* ]

As Ashamin turns, the glint of gold upon his slender haunches draws my eyes; strange.

The smoke smell grows strong as he moves and lets the wind touch new places of him, making the air smell ironically warm and comfortable despite the shivering that besieges my damp, sweat lined skin and his own, nearer to the blizzard which wails its sorrowful and heavy song outside.

These are the backdrops to my thoughts which touch upon the shining metal, the strangest natural born marking I have ever seen, and so I deduce that it is not natural, that its reminiscence to the jagged white scars I have seen on the pelts of aged, seasoned warriors is not to be mistaken for a pretty trinket given to him at birth by the artistic fingers of creation, as the gilded detail upon my own frame.

Those are wounds born of a horned thing, a being with two blades which rest alongside the ears (or incredibly accurate in their aim with a single blade, to create such parallel markings), much like my darling Aithniel, or my uncle; I have even seen a dragon or two with horns such as these. The scar itself is much larger than those that I can compare it to, and I wonder for a while just how close to dying the little man came when he encountered whatever ramming force had nearly hewn his right hip off.

His tail, long and banded in the strange metal object that had “sparked” this whole debacle into life, drops to the stone floor, again emitting a few dazzling arcs of lightning. I look at the object as if it’s a venomous snake, like I look at most things I don’t understand and which pose some obvious air of threat, but the look is fleeting, my stubborn refusal to seem weak in front of anyone drawing my eyes away from the frightfully foreign coil and to his face, his blackened gaze.

“It’s alright,” he says, claiming to have had a long day as well.

I grunt in response, not really sure what else to say about it, but it doesn’t really seem he was looking for one, anyway. For a good while, we stand in the uncomfortable, crackling silence that is born after an agreement to discontinue a disagreement, and I can’t help but feel like I’m being judged.

No gavel sounds, but Ashamin’s voice, his words luring my eyes back down to the strange, dark deer creature, the softened glow of compassion brightening my weary and aggravated gaze for the fleetest of moments.

"Fine," I say, back peddling some steps so that I am nearest the rear of the cave, leaving ample room for the smaller, painted stallion and his young friend to enter the space, having no need to be nearer to me than they were now. It’s still pretty damn cold inside, but at least the wind doesn’t reach in here as bad.

"He should move if he is chilled," I say as an afterthought and in some attempt at the typical niceties which pass between herd mates, an ear flicking back and one of my legs slipping into a posture of comfort, rather than hostility, "blood warms where it rushes."

Not much to my surprise, the deer-thing does not immediately enter the cave, remaining stalwartly at the side of his companion with a strange bleating murmur. What is curious is that the painted Haruspex remains in the threshold, rather than entering, perhaps shy to the notion that I might so easily drop my offense towards him and allow him in.

Even after the little shadow creature skitters into a darkened bit of the cave, Ashamin remains in the cold reach of the snow, even when those large white eyes of his soul bound beast look out at him with a pleading that even my dense sensibilities perceive.

I look from one to the other, my face bleeding just how little I care for whatever interpretation they take of my offer to either of them, finally settling on the unicorn as his voice breaks the monotonous whistle of the wind outside.

My damp skin ripples in a chilled quiver in an effort to keep itself from freezing. I stoically ignore the sensation, for better or worse; my coat is thick, and yet even now I can feel the warmth of my body struggling against the chill of the sweat that evaporates more slowly than it frosts.

How ungodly cold that wind outside; beneath me, I let my legs shift every so often, keeping the blood moving through their thin flesh.

"Rikyn," I offer in a puff of white breath frozen on the wind, not bothering to lie about the name which was given to me as I might a stranger to this snowy vale, as I have before in my life, creating a myriad collection of masks which I might adorn at will. That he wants to ask me about this land makes my heart warm towards him all the more, purring with satiated ego, and that I am confident I can answer his questions is written in every muscle of my body as I more eagerly turn towards him, my golden eyes shining in an interest that has yet to be relinquished in our meeting.

As long as he does not another regaling of my adventures, stretched thin and aching already in their telling to my sire, he can know whatever he wants of the Basin. It gives purpose to the endless hours of my mother’s stories while we walked from one place to another, and it makes me feel useful.

"What do you want to know?"

He lies.

I don’t know for sure, of course, but when less than five minutes prior the man looked at me like an insect that needed to be swatted into the wall (thus reminded of its smallness), I find I can’t take much from his statement that it is a pleasure to have met me. It certainly hasn’t been a pleasure meeting him, not by my standards, more a disastrous clash of personalities that, had it been a different day, might have genuinely been what he calls it.

I bob my head in mock agreement. That’s what I’m supposed to do, right, acknowledge he’d said something?

Either way, the statement or the motion of my head (perhaps both) makes him comfortable enough to come in, his hooves and tail trailing white chunks of snow among the russet bark and wood. I hadn’t noticed until now that they are layered in white, and that his hooves, compacted with the stuff, and think to myself that they are probably aching, even as a shiver lightly traces along my figure, less harsh than those which had come first.

I find myself looking at them while he ponders what question he wants to ask. I’d half expected him to have one waiting for me, and that he takes the time to think of one lets my idle, young mind wander off on such ventures as to how much of the evening has slipped by in our awkward social encounter, or how it seems my body is finally gaining some ground on the sweat slicked chill of my frame.

His voice, which has been smooth and even throughout our conversation (perhaps riled by anger at points, but never this shivering wisp of a thing he uses now), trembles through the air, along the lines of his question. My eyes widen, surprised he does not know, wondering precisely how far this herd has slipped out its designated path that their own Haruspex doesn’t know the history of its cultures, forgetting the reluctance that had found itself while he asked, childishly thinking nothing of it or the fact that he cannot meet my golden eyes which search him in wonder of his ignorance.

I guess it makes sense if he is new here and those here have not been forthcoming of our history. Perhaps they, too, do not know – which is a shame. The Aurora Basin and the unicorns within have outlasted many forces which sought to destroy them, to defile the golden glory of their virtuous cause and purpose.

"It has always been so," I answer, hearing my mother’s satin voice ripple through my thoughts, feeling the swell of pride in my breast that I knew the stories, that I remembered, "ever since the Frostheart and the Dark Empress claimed right to the World’s Edge, even after the people were driven from the Moon’s wood by the Qian and their fierce Dragon Queen, Mirage. Before then, too, though I never learned the stories to be more than legends…either way, the God of the Spark appeared to the unicorns, a God who had never before been seen in Helovia, and led them here, to the Basin, a land seemingly made for their people, as none but the God himself had walked its valley before then.”

I do not name their clandestine accomplices, the name of the group of murderers and wolves which had gathered at my mothers summons - the Plague. While my mother’s eyes do not watch, my father is still here, and I can feel the dark shadow of Deimos’ eyes watching the land; in all honesty, I fear them and their retribution more than I ever have my dam.

"I know of no precise reason, but have speculated, as have my kin. The Empress shared tales of her birth land with my dam," I explain further, "it was a land which was divided by race as we now do here on our own, a land which was ruled by the horned. For the Lady Psyche, I believe it was comfort which drove her to her own blood, and of course ambition. I do not know why the Frostheart took such a path; all I know is that we have never cast away their laws, and that many would not seek to, that few challenge them. Who would, when an unknown God saw fit to bless them both with a land, to appear to them first? It is almost as if He approved of their course.”

Growing distant, my golden eyes dim, my mind retracting to the firefly wood and the mammoth cave at its heart; I think of the Starpool and its deep, endless waters, and I feel my heart swell with the resolve that the God of the Spark, son and creation of the First Gods, had indeed placed a benevolent seal of approval on the somewhat violent aims of the Plague and the greater herd that hid them.

"We have a vast right to this world, Ashamin," I say, finding focus again on the black eyed Haruspex, my tail curling with an absent pleasure behind me, "a right which time and time again is presented to us on the lips of Gods. Perhaps that is truly why the Aurora Basin only allows unicorns."

Well placed in his rank if his interest is any evidence, my tongue waggles and his hooves cross the stone with a steady cadence; the deer beast bounds across the remaining space between them to envelope his bonded in an embrace of his short neck, and occasionally I can feel his eyes find me. I get the sense that, while the painted unicorn may have eased into my company, his small friend has not – even though I have successfully cooled the anger which swept through me, hot and irrational, unkempt in my youth and arrogance.

What is still unrestrained is my pride, which I doubt will ever find ropes which hold it. I was raised by two unicorns who were proud of their pure lineage, as I would be of mine, and I will be damned if I ever care that this arrogance, this truth, strikes wounds like whips into the soft hearts of half breeds and the hornless, or that it scalds the gentle sensibilities of my kinder kin. Within my heart is a prayer for eternity, and for those who will come after me, and it is with this boldness that I tell the tale of my people, that I pull Ashamin into the beautiful conquest of Loorien that I have seen in the deep waters of the Starpool.

I cannot help that, for whatever reason, my words have wounded him.

His eyes narrow, his tail lashes and his ears pull back in agitation towards me. I find that my own ears fall back defensively, but rather than a snarl of anger, a soft smirk flickers to life on my lips, one that is soft and mocking. That Ashamin speaks of pride being in the past of such a herd as this, ruled and guided by those it looks to, is almost enough to make me laugh – I manage not to only out of respect for his seniority, and his rank.

Has he not met Thranduil (my father had shared enough of the changes for me to know that my mothers literal golden boy – his swollen hubris outmatching, perhaps, even her mammoth ego - was now the Lord alongside Deimos), or the Time God himself?

Like so many of our kin, this man is lost, deluded by the illusion, by the vain mortal hope, that the world is as it should be; his soul bleeds for the weak, for the imperfections which mar the beauty which might be had in their absence. So used to the sight of their winged figures and their hornless faces as to believe that they are a truth which has always been, rather than the deeper truth that these beings were never meant to be, that they are accidents who shattered the serenity made for us by the First Gods – and, perhaps this Ashamin is not of pure blood, or perhaps he is only warped by the imbalance that ravages Loorien in the absence of our creators. Perhaps he feels fear when he thinks of the death, of the thick rivers of blood that will flow if the truth becomes known to more than just the few who remember the oldest tales.

"A miracle, a right," I state with a devious glint to my eyes, a mocking roll of my shoulder, "it does not change that a God condoned the moral path of our fore leaders. It seems more foolhardy to ignore the truths found in the past to suit the softness of your heart, Ashamin."

There is hostility thriving in the cavern again, even I’m not too absorbed in myself to notice, and for once, it is not my anger which heats the air with almost tangible electric crackles, which holds my eyes fast on the slope horned man in my cave. My lips still smile, a soft curve which mocks his outrage, which challenges his logic with the cool confidence of my own. I thoroughly trust in my chosen path – all Ashamin’s anger teaches me is that, perhaps, he questions his more often than a man his age should.

The off chance that my words instill fear in him flickers as a thought, my eyes trailing again down the strange, useless figure of his horn which sweeps down his homely features, lingering on the tip that should be a weapon, not some perverse mockery of our race. It could be he is not pure – which, honestly, is none of my regard, for he looks the part and surely could play it if he chose, though I pity his offspring born broken as their ancestors who lost their magic so long ago.

I bless the Gods for the purity of my lineage, that I will not have to slaughter my own blood to walk among the sacred.

I am torn from my thoughts by the harsh words which snap from his lips like snakes reaching for a passing limb, and for only the briefest of moments does my smile falter – because then he challenges me, a flurry of words cast over his shoulder as he turned to leave (and I would let him, because it meant that I had won our little verbal argument), and I find the smirk revitalized on my lips.

Never will I claim to be modest, for I believe in my strength and my training, and I find it unlikely that Ashamin will leave the spar he calls for as proud as he is now; I eye the tesla coil, and ponder about just what sort of gifts might be bestowed to a God’s chosen seer, but there is a recklessness in my young heart that makes these considerations only singular flashes in the over eager storm of my thoughts.

"Morning of the first thaw," I dictate with a facetious smile, giving me time to train for the spar, and the Haruspex the same advantage, "just before first light. Your place."

I assume, of course, that his place is where the mirror is, where Kahlua’s blue black scorpion watches the valley and the smooth, unfreezing waters of the lake with gemstone eyes. I will ascertain as much in the morrow, or whenever the stupid blizzard slows up outside – surely it won’t be hard to figure out.



[ OOC: It's okay! I know how life goes, and school is more important than a game. :P We don't cost you lots of money lololol ]