He feels her touch unexpectedly, his grazed skin twitching beneath her velvet muzzle when he recognizes her company. A rimmed ear tilts back in her direction, but he does not look, brown nostrils curling with the familiarity and heat of her scent, his muscles slowly relaxing as she ghosts her way along his side. Bright green eyes close in a long blink when she reaches his jaw, the length of his tail flicking around his legs as he suppresses a shiver, before finally looking down to meet her.

“Good morning,” he hums deeply, a shadow of a smile ghosting over his lips before they twist into his characteristic smirk (something familiar, normal, and comfortable). Unabashed, he takes in her delicate features, framed with tumbling locks of white curls and haloed by the dawn’s soft glow—he feels his body react in more ways than one. Even so, the stallion doesn’t overlook her injuries. With her bruises and burns now scabbed over, and the healing process quickened by her own magical talents, he feels a quiet sigh of relief. It is over—they survived. It is a worry he hadn’t considered before now, as reckless as he had been (and will be).

Flirting with the idea of reaching out to her, embracing her (in a physical and desperate need, surely, it is nothing more), Rohan is caught off guard when the mare suddenly dashes away. His sides expanding in an exasperated snort, he watches her prance into the frothy shores, nevertheless enjoying the view of her supple movement. The Warlander seizes what advantage he can of the moment before sauntering closer to where she had danced, his muscled neck arching naturally and his eyes gleaming beneath the shadow of his brow.

A broad, rumbling laughter rolls simply from his lips. “The whole lot of Helovia could use a good long beauty sleep, sweetheart,” his smirk deepens playfully, large antlers catching the sun’s light as he tilts his head, “but it is not them I am concerned with.” The words fall from his tongue easily—his usual coquettish praise, flattering the damsel so that he might see her smile become bashful beneath his charm—but what Rohan refuses to acknowledge (what he has always avoided) is how honest it might be.

It is no different now, his green eyes skirting away from her figure when he feels something stir in that heart he dares to call a stone (confined, barricaded, impenetrable). He will not entertain such foolish things—not again. He had abandoned Iofiel without a second thought, hardly sparing her a final glance as he fled from her side, regretting nothing. What, for him, does that say about love?

Hearing his name, the large stallion returns his eyes to Enna. “Hmm?” He waits for her to continue, thinking that something still clings to her lips, but it is only silence that stretches between them. Looking at her now, Rohan knows that he should ask how she is, how she has shouldered the grief he knows she has borne, but he is not one comfortable with sharing such knowledge. He pushes other boundaries, pressing and stretching and leaping until they force him to stop. Suddenly, in this moment, he feels this infiniteness.

In her gaze (this sweet, tender secret), it breaks—the something that had been holding him back from her (chains he hadn’t realized until now, when they fall from his mind and body and push him forward, closer). Risen by this surge of confidence, Rohan moves towards the little mare, salty waters licking up his hairy legs. “Look at us,” he grins crookedly, “We have fought gods and emerged victorious.” His voice is deep with his pride, relishing for a moment in their triumph before he settles at her side, his lips carefully finding her scabbed wounds. But victory did not come without repercussions.

Gently, his touch traces the line of her wounds along her back, and shoulder, and then trailing up the slender curve of her neck. She is warm beneath his touch, so delicate and fairy like, he can hardly comprehend how such a dainty thing can contain the fire and resolve (and stubbornness) that he has seen from her. Pausing, he breathes softly. “Could there ever be a sweeter triumph?” His words are murmured into her skin, left almost open-ended, nearly an invitation for her to join him in this moment.


“Speech.”