Their children will learn to hope for a Caesar.


The arrival of the griffon within the Rotunda is followed with golden eyes and a smile, at least until she lands; the image of the creature is one which reminds me of home, and the pride the people who live there. That I don’t currently hang out there doesn’t change the fact that I was bound to the mountains in more ways than one, from friendship, to blood, to the very moments of my creation and arrival (though I blessedly know nothing of my creation). It is good to find strangers who remind me of the Basin, even if the memory now comes with a bitter taste upon my tongue.

It almost eases the loneliness I veil in nonchalant, adventurer’s delight.

Her wariness goes unnoticed – I’m rarely uncomfortable or hesitant around anyone, and she’s no different. What I do notice is that she smiles, which is good, an image which I drink in and hope to feed, to elaborate on. Her question, following her pretty little grin, is answered with a rolling shrug of my shoulder. They probably have, as have so many other things.

Time devours the weak and unworthy.

If she wants an answer, she doesn’t really give me time before she’s talking again, mostly I guess because she’s busy trying to answer my questions, and I can take too long thinking sometimes – not to mention the almost rhetorical nature of her inquiry, now that I’ve had enough time to muddle my way through eager hormonal fluxes to think about it.

"Not really," I reply to her question as to whether or not I’m new around here, "I was born in Helovia. I just got back from a journey, too."

Mine was adventurous, in a way, if your mother leaving you and all her duties for some other kingdom (a kingdom that was your safe haven before she usurped it) could be deemed adventure. The eagerness with which I’d discussed the Nightwalk when I’d first come back has been lost to the bitter feelings that well up when I think of it now, and thereby my words leave out any mention of the land that had given me so much purpose.

That had given me Xynia…

The thought of her makes the rainbow light playing across this girl’s face less pretty than it had been; as with all first love, the silver filly shines with a radiance, particularly in my memory, that outshines even Lothiriel, or other such delicate damsels made for visual devouring – this white speckled lass is no where near as voluptuous, delicate, and purely seductive as the Reaper’s daughter. It’s not to say that she doesn’t have something to offer, of course, but it also doesn’t make her a girl forever away in a firefly forest.

A soft sigh fills the air between us, a sigh on which I try to send Xynia’s image away from me, the cheerfulness I’ve brought into the conversation so far faltering only momentarily; looking towards the dual horned miss, I reapply my charming smile, trying to let the past ease back where it belongs.

"I’m Rikyn," I offer, figuring that there is little reason to lie to a unicorn, and a lady one at that (especially because she seems as stricken by wanderlust as I, by her words and smell).