She had awoken alone, Alice a silent but vigilant guard beside her. Why had she ever expected him to stay? And yet...he had not awoken her in his departure, had slipped into the evening like a golden wraith, taking the dredges of her heart with him. For all her strength and cunning, she still felt weak in the knees to imagine confronting him a second time. How could she? They'd laid themselves bare, stared down at the meager shards they had left to offer one another, and he'd swept hers away after him. She had shifted to her knees in the crumpled leaves, dazed and confused, the afternoon sun dappling her rosen hide. Until Alice could take her confused, distant heartbreak no longer, and shoved Hotaru to her hooves to find the remnants of the day.

A part of her was wild with rage, traversing the snowy drifts that shifted as easily as sand dunes in the south. How dare he have such a sway over her? How dare she allow him so close? She was queen and puppeteer, orchestrating a thousand plots with a twitch of her delicate fingers. She was Ophelia's successor and Illynx's craft, striding powerfully through the once-looming shadow of her mother. Where once she had hidden behind lies, Hotaru at last allowed the Opulent to shine her light upon and within her own breast, unashamed of the greatness that she hailed from. 

Hailed from...

Alice paused in her hunting, smoke drifting through her fur and across the washed out landscape. Mighty head turned towards Hotaru, watching her lady slow and pause. She'd not been there, for long shadowed nights in a huddled group in a distant land with crimson pools and no god to watch their skins. She'd not hunted with a rose red filly young and vibrant with vitality across emerald foothills, had not been there to hold together the pieces as Hotaru threw everything she had into the dirt and walked away. Alice had never lived the nomadic life, had known only Hotaru, pack, Basin, hunting partner, eternal. Hotaru lifted her bihued eyes to Alice's distant form, the afternoon sunlight striking colors across the landscape. Their eyes met, and Hotaru gave a ghost of a smile, even if the physical action was unnecessary. I'm okay echoed across their bond in all other ways. 

Turning, Alice followed the scent of fresh blood, leaving the stain of the old behind in the memories of her bonded. Perhaps if they ran far enough, hunted long enough, Alice and Hotaru could leave behind the withering, decaying landscape of their past. 

What Alice ventures upon isn't expected. Blackened forms against the whiteness, out of place, out of proper order. The images flit to Hotaru in her naivety, incapable of comprehending what stands before her, for she has never seen a winged beast such as this. Instead, a strangled gasp left the throat of the rosen Lady of the Basin, and in the span of a few heartbeats the dainty femme was bounding over the scenery towards the inkspot her bonded had happened across. 

In a flurry of snow and surprise she's before him, curly windtossed locks framing girlishly wide eyes, knees high and nostrils flaring. It couldn't be him...but who else could it be? And she has no right to think he remembers her, remembers anything of what they were, or believe that she can reclaim it. Too many years and battles waged that changed them into statues that held no light of their former relationship harbored within. They had changed. She had changed, from the stuttering mess of insecurity that she had once been. Could he recognize her, so changed was she from the cowering girl she'd evolved from?

"Mesec?"