Maybe she must admit to herself that she does not know Ashamin as well as she had thought, or perhaps he'd simply been changing, subtle but insistent, while she had not been looking. A part of her had been hoping for the meek, submissive soul he'd once been, the one that would have let her run and escape him, because she wasn't ready for these looming feelings and what they symbolized. In fact she had not anticipated him tracking her down at all, though perhaps she did not give him enough due credit. Maybe she was just clinging to the last dredges of hope that she could get away from this confrontation and live in merciful ignorance a little longer. 

The sound of his hooves seems to ratchet up her heartbeat, breath coming in short, helpless gasps even though she does not tire. Alice whines softly where she circles uncertainly in the grove of evergreens, wanting to help but not entirely sure how. She understands Hotaru's conflicted emotions, but she has never loved anyone other than the rosen girl, and does not know how to advise her on such matters of the heart. But Hotaru rejects it violently, because she can't admit that this is in any way relevant to her heart, to the burnt-out husk sitting uselessly in her chest. Ashamin's clean, gentle hands did not deserve to be stained with the ashes of her once-love. Why he would seek it out - he isn't, don't be stupid, that's not what this is, calm down - when it was so useless? Why did he not return to Rexanna with her gold-dipped everything? He deserved better, and that was the only reason she turned around. Because she had to convince him of that before he signed on the dotted line and sold away his life and love to someone like her. 

His words seem odd to her when he responds to her pitiful attempt at keeping him away, because she knows she's avoiding the topic just as surely as he is. Her eyes flicker hesitantly between the dark of his muzzle and the dark of his eyes, hooves shifting restless and demure. He makes her shy, and he is so completely different from Thranduil that she is left scrambling and drowning, not knowing how to fight against this current when she has no experience with it. He strides toward her, tentative in his approach but sure in his movements. Her heart jolts and her skin is trembling, breath held captive in her throat as he bears down upon her. She knows she should back up accordingly, keep the space between them, but she can't. Her legs won't obey her, and a part of her wants him to come closer. Wants him to take this power away from her, but not rip it from her hands as everyone else does. She wants to place her entire being within his hands, wants him to move her, embrace and caress her with that gentleness that had first drawn her to him. Hotaru knows that he is as much man as any other, but sometimes she forgets. She remembers now, as he murmurs in his deep voice, the void of his eyes drawing her in. Maybe he could take care of her, maybe she could trust him to. 

But she can't, she can't fall to the soft throaty rasp of his voice. She can't be seduced by the gentle way he treats her, because she's not precious, she's not something to be held so delicately. She doesn't deserve it, nor does she deserve his soft, urgent stories or the warmth of his skin in the middle of the night when she hides from the world. Her head begins to swing back and forth, a denial of what he's working himself up to say. "Ashamin," she whispers, and is both ashamed and petrified by how her voice breaks loud and clear on his name. Hotaru's slim ears dance nervously atop her crown, flickering back only to helplessly prick forward to catch his words. She wants to run, embrace her cowardice and leave him to the beginnings of...of whatever this is, because she can't let herself be deluded even for a second into thinking this is anything like a confession. 

"No," she moans like she's dying, and she is ashamed that her eyes are beginning to swim with a thin film of tears that do not fall but cling like diamonds to her eyelashes and strike rainbows across her vision. "You don't know what you're saying," she urges, faltering a few steps back. Hotaru doesn't want to sound presumptuous, doesn't want to pretend like she knows what he's going to say. He's not, he's not, he can't. But she has to stop it anyways. "We...we can talk about this later, right?" Hotaru tries to force her voice into lightheartedness, as if labeling whatever he intends to say as simplistic. Something that can be said in any moment, not something of great magnitude. And she hates herself for how badly she wants to fetch up against his chest. (When did you grow so strong, Ashamin?) She hates how even as she tries to deny him and redirect him, all she can imagine is falling into him, letting him touch and love comfort her. 

But Hotaru does not let those desires take root long enough to come to fruition. Even still she is left standing, knees shaking and skin trembling, with the force of her wanting.

OOC thingies here