You were never supposed to leave.

The silence clung to the air for her, time felt as though it began to slow. She didn’t know what to do with herself, sitting in this suspense as she spoke to the creature of Tembovu’s past. Though his voice began to break and she felt herself feeling rather small. Unsure of all this history that sat behind the walls of the Dorobian hearts, she only knew of her own history. The fact in the irony that her own mother of royalty had fallen in love with a general of an army – producing the Thief that stood before the snake in the water. Irony in the fact that the only true love Rex had known was that given by Tembovu. One that was crumbling away ever so slowly – cracking and breaking, etching scars across her heart.

Her ears flattened briefly as he spoke of Rein being a mistake. Though a blessing, as well. The golden mare shifted her weight, slowly nodding along to what he was saying – unable to actually speak the words herself. She could never call him a mistake, just something unpredicted. And yet here she was indirectly calling him one. It was frustrating for her, frustrating to know the truth and hear it come aloud in the midst of the Green Labyrinth spoken by someone she didn’t even know. Her blue eyes watched his striped face as he spoke, her blues glinting with hints of sadness and regret, lines under her eyes of sleepless nights and pain.

And then he said it.

“Have you given him cause to believe you were anything but what you said you were?”

Yes.
No.
Sort of?

The mare wrapped her mind around the cause of the issue from when they met. Remembering as she told the Elephant King of her being his when Caleb was involved. The fact she told him that she was royalty from a land far away when she was no better than a slave.

The fact she had agreed to sleep with Caleb to prevent him from taking her as prisoner – only to have the beast join her home.

She shivered under his scrutinizing emerald eyes. Her head shifting away from him as he continued and the knots began to billow within her chest. A small sigh left her maw as her ears flickered limply, feeling the love begin to swell away from her hopelessly – as if her love was a moth and her lover were the flame. “I wasn’t who he thought I was, before we even fell for one another.” A shift in her weight as he began to speak of Mara. Her fluted ears pointed to him, drinking up everything he said. Comparing herself to the highly regarded Mara with everything he said. The fact that she looked like her, knotted the mare’s stomach. But that wasn’t where it ended.

“Mara would not have hurt Tembovu.”

‘I didn’t have a choice.’

“She was not about living a life of shadows and concealment.”

‘it’s all I’ve ever known.’

“She was open and honest, caring and compassionate.”

As much as the mare wanted to believe that she was those things – Kiuaii and her both knew that was a lie. She didn’t want to hurt him. And yet he hurt her too – but that wasn’t something to be shared. She didn’t want to admit the problems she had with him, but if anyone knew him, it was Kiuaji. He spoke of childhood friends and the mare’s stomach continued to twist and spin. What was it like to know someone that long? To love someone that deeply? To bury them from a life stolen away?

She’d never know.

Her creams and golds tensed as her joints stiffened as Kiuaji spoke of what they had all believed to be the truth. And yet she still couldn’t come to terms with it. It was out in the air, a voice on the wind, and yet her ears refused to drink it in. She flicked her tail in her silence as it began to suffocate her. “I know.” Her voice was small, her eyes trailing back to the stag. “I didn’t want it to be like this.” The Thief managed to say between her growing heartbeat.

And then he stood, the creature from Doboro, shaking himself as if the things he said meant nothing. And yet, they meant everything. Her head lowered slightly, his words reaching her once again. The confession of love given before they even truly knew one another. A pain in the back of her mind that she wished they had started differently. All of that was in hindsight, however. And as Kiuaji began to go full circle, speaking of her son once again, her heart began to beat louder at the fact that she did have a child, and he – still childless.

She looked away from him again, turning a half step away to look out into the maze of the bamboo stalks that stretched to the sky, towering over her like a prison as she stood within her numbing thoughts.

“The confession was given after the cracks had started. And no, the child isn’t his. But if he knew who I was and the things I’ve done then he might understand.” She paused, a slight shrug in knowing that there was no excuse in having another mans child. But yet, she knew deep down it was solace enough for her.

“He barely knows a thing about me. Whether or not that’s my fault, I don’t know. Our love fell on masks. He was not who I thought he was – likewise I was worlds apart from what who he prayed I was.” Rexanna’s voice grew shaky in the slightest as she spoke, her eyes landing back on the snake in the grass. “I told him I was a Thief in the Basin and he acted as if I used him.” She watched him, thoughts coming carefully to her as her tongue picked what to say and what not to say. “I don’t know what made him think that. I don’t know why he thinks I have this stupid vendetta against him.” Blue eyes narrowed, watching the stallion before her – the height something that towered over her like Tembovu’s did.

But she wasn’t afraid.

“I want to tell him, but he won’t even look at me.” She sighed, ears flickering down with the sense of her distrust brushing away. “There’s no excuse as to why my son was conceived. But there might be understanding in learning just why he was” She shrugged again, eyes staring toward the ground with her numbness showing across her face. “And you’re right. I’m nothing like Mara aside from appearance. I told him I couldn’t be like her...” She glanced away from him, back to the towering stalks of bamboo as the light shifted overhead. “He was trying to mold me into her.

"Talk?"