You're so cold but you feel alive

It took him long enough to notice. To be fair, Erthë hadn't exactly shouted after him, begging and pleading him to wait for her (quite the opposite) but for someone who was supposed to be a hero, survivor of a glorious war and asshole extraordinaire, he sure didn't pay a lot of attention to his surroundings. She probably ought to be pleased about this, as she had no greater desire to speak to Rikyn - trying would be like volunteering herself to the grating ululations of seagulls, constant and never ending - but instead this lack of awareness only annoyed her. Was it really worth her time to worry about someone as dull as that? Was she not better off concerning herself with less stuck up creatures, who didn't hurl insults at her every other word or less?

If she could have, Erthë would have turned on the spot and returned home, or better yet not followed the overgrown brat of a stallion in the first place. But she couldn't. The words he had chosen to use, subconscious or not, kept gnawing at her, itching like fine sand stuck beneath silken pelt. They left her with a feeling that she had missed something, as though a crucial part of the whole encounter had been left out, a vital scene skipped out of neglect... or perhaps because of a greenhorns inability to follow through?

This simply would not do. She might not be much of an actor, but the filly would bite her own tail off before she became a sloppy one. So she followed him, hovered over the bay unicorn like a guarding angel, or perhaps a vengeful spirit - refusing to leave him be until she had figured out what she missed.

When he finally did notice her presence, he of course had to state the obvious. Any other time it would have warranted him a snaky retort, but Erthë was there to repent, to learn and not repeat her past mistakes (providing she had made any, which she still didn't wish to believe). So instead she simply offered him a sweet little smile and adjusted the angle of her wings so that she would descend slightly, falling in by his side so low over the ground that her feet would brush through the tall, flowing beach grass if she let them drop.

"I know. I am not going home."

Languid strokes of the broad wings kept her afloat, drifting lazily on and off on the beach in pace with, and sometimes around Rikyn should his pace became too slow for even her patient cruise. Flying had drained some of the worst ire from her temper like it always did, and the satisfaction she gleaned from being off her feet, at a higher elevation and in all likelihood faster than the stallion gave Erthë the energy she needed to maintain this new angelic patience that was so unlike her true self it was almost laughable.

"Where are you headed?"

Not repeating new patterns included making new ones. A simple question might accomplish what shouting had not managed to do - there were only so many ways to answer this, and if Rikyn managed to make himself an ass by answering this then she would probably give up on him for good.

Please let me give up and go home.