I know him.

I know him.

There were two shadows on the beach, and now that Nymeria saw them together, their silhouettes cut from the same form and fabric, their twinness snapped into place with strength enough to bruise. She watched them from a distance—her dragon sailing in the wind above—her heart beating quicker than necessary and her lips forming a silent grimace.

Who was she to look at first; who was she to fear more? The man who’d defeated her in battle, or the man who had made her cry as a foal? They both posed an ugly threat (her memories reformed their handsomeness into something monstrous), and she wondered if she should turn away from them altogether before they noticed her, before this de-evolved into a nasty situation.

(Who said it had to be nasty? She’d almost done it there and then with Abraham when he’d whipped her into submission; she must’ve smelled from a mile away in her first heat. Instead, she’d backed away from him.)

No, the nastiness inherent to them was all in their eyes. Abraham's eyes might be blue and green, but they had the same stony deadness as his twin's.

She stood, and she watched. In the end, it was the way her heart beat and how her mouth tasted that made her stalk towards two. Fear would not make her captive to anyone—not to her brother and not to these men.

Nymeria does not put on a pretense of prettiness, nor bravery. Instead she wears her face in a tidy mask that scrupulously covers her emotion. Above, Lilómiel cawed a greeting to the strange dragons, a rolling, submissive welcome (he remembered their fire after all.)

What’re you going to do, Nym?

I don’t know.

It hardly felt right to say hello. It hardly felt right at all to be walking up to them, and she did not often fear a fight (not anymore.) Instead she was thinking back to what she told the Aurelight, how she wanted to defeat Reginald in her own way now that she had aged. (Could she do it? She didn’t think she could take on the two of them, but this was her domain—was there anytime better than the now?)

The sea slithered in tighter to the shore where she skirted it, drawn by her subconscious, hungry for her touch. (Hello, she thought to it. I’ve missed you too.)

There’s a low growl of voices, a Reginald, and she is infringing on their conversation. She doesn’t stop far away; she doesn’t come in too close, either. It is a fitting distance, a conservative—but not fearful—one.

She thinks that they’ll devour her if she shows fear.

“I’ve been looking for you,” she says after Abraham, settling her gaze on the first perpetrator of blatant violence in her life. (Her skin is prickling. Lilómiel urges her to go.)  “And you were nowhere to be found.” Red eyes swing back to Abraham; she wonders how the balance would shift were she to throw her chances in with him. Sidle up close to his flank, press her hip against his—would he resist it? Or would he, confused by her forwardness, say nothing? And what would the twin do?

(Did the twin—“Reginald”—want for sex like she knew Abraham had? Could she cause a divide between the two over where her loyalties rested? Or would they fall prey to old sexist notions?)