Lived unbruised,
we are friends; and I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

Sigh no more.

All Ashamin had wanted was to go to the Dragon's Throat undisturbed by the same things that had forced him on this retreat. But the God of the Spark had his fucked up ways of damning blessing the haruspex with annoyances experiences when they were needed.

Which was why, he imagined, Ki'irha showed up. Showed up like a very piece of the heavens brought down to earth, clouding his vision and ruining his concentration, but seeming to ignore him almost entirely.

The clovenheart wondered if that was how he came off--as not wanting to be bothered. And perhaps that was true because all the others that arrived and became a crowd seemed to pay him and his rather obtrusive manifestation no mind as they built their walls and beat their wings.

But Ki'irha?

For the mare with whom so large a part of his heart rested to pay him no mind was insult to injury. And the injury was there, and it was raw, and it burned, because the moment that he saw Ki'irha--really saw her there like a bright star so beyond his reach that he felt a fool for ever trying--was the same moment that his magic did the very thing he'd asked of it.

The stoats' hearts were no longer his concern. Despite the fact that Ashamin's concentration had been shattered the moment Ki'irha had arrived, he had been utterly successful. Too successful, in fact, for when his shapeless heart first cradled the orb he felt a warmth so small and tickling that he barely registered it. Not knowing he had succeeded made the shock of the failure and consequential pain even more extreme.

The orb that tore out from his apparition sent a flaming heat out from inside him and through his chest, instantly burning a hole in the same place where Hotaru once had. Was it irony or luck? He didn't have time or the senses to reflect.

Lochan, too implicated by pain travelling across their bond to remain distant, darted Ashamin's way and sent dark mists trailing behind him and diving towards the orb. The little eye could not even pretend apathy; he was not so skilled at unfeeling as Rakt, who even now seemed oddly cold as he moved his red body stoically through the crowd and to Ashamin's side, leaving stardust in his wake.

Somehow, through the simmering dark that crept over his vision, Ashamin feared for the mare in blue. So many others in the crowd, perhaps even magic, and it was only she and his companions that he cared about now. Electricity forced its way through his chest and crackled over the burnt skin, slowly knitting together ugly red swaths and rebuilding skin. Hairs grew back in the same blue and gold that Hotaru had made them with her love and attention.

And it wasn't as though Ashamin would compare those loves, or any of the ones he had. And it wasn't as though Ashamin wanted Ki'irha to be what Hotaru was to him because she wasn't, and perhaps she never would be, but he wanted her to be something. He needed her to be in his life.

If their love was the sort that was full of hurt, that could not survive without the cold steel of each other's blades cutting into flesh, then so be it. Time would heal the wounds he would bare for her attention. Without her injury he would wither and starve. It was not up to her to deny him that bitter competition, that mutual understanding of the skill they both carried in the weaponry of their bodies and their ability to tear each other apart. Just as it had not been up to Rexanna whether or not he could love her while knowing she would not love him the same in return; just as it had not been up to Hotaru whether or not he could love her without taking the risk of her ruining his soul; it was not up to Ki'irha to end the fight of whatever love they had.

Determined to cling to what was left, even as darkness threatened to overtake his vision and his companions supported him, Ashamin sent a jolt of his magic towards the starry mare.

Let her heart skip just one beat. Ashamin the Clovenheart would not let her leave him behind.

""