He makes her laugh. In the warm air, the laughter pouring from her lips is almost blissful. Salt air kisses her lungs with a gentle caress as she drags more of it in. A few feet from her, Hobgoblin’s jaws open and close with intense force, slamming down carnivore teeth into the wet, lifeless mass. Tentacles drape from the sides of his mouth and swing down like Spanish Moss in the grove.
A strong tide had brought in a large grouping of jellyfish, and in the wake of his hunger, the Rougarou hadn’t taken the effort to remember that they pay out sadly in the form of food and bring a sting worth cringing at. The bottomless pit of his stomach overtook his mind, and led him to act out of impulse.
“You should have thought before you did that.”
A groan that she can’t tell is out of pain or anger comes from him. The last of the tentacles curl into his jaws and he swallows, wearing a grimace as he does so. More bodies litter the beach as if to be a massacre. More arrive with each roll of the foaming waves, throwing its aftermath onto the shore lazily. Some sweep out to sea when it withdraws, but many linger and pass with the minutes into nothingness.
“Are you done?” His mouth gapes wide in response, showing lines of sting marks that are surely going to last him. In this form, there’s no way to truly see the full extent of his mistake, but an idea is brewing in her head already.
“Mouth hurt.”
That’s your fault.
“Please heal.”
Their eyes meet and hold, clinging onto one another’s stare like it’ll bring back the dead. Her debate is short-lived and he knows that she doesn’t wish to take pity on him because this is his fault, but it doesn’t stop him from using her soft heart to his advantage.
The flame slithers out like a snake from her velvet lips, devouring his wounds with a quick hunger.

OOC: Hobgoblin is in his Wendigo form.

also ricky astley because i got rick rolled last night and this song kinda fits them because vol never lets sia have a moment of chill c''''':

Despite Hobgoblin’s obvious discomfort and the mass death occurring around her, this is a simple, lazily pleasing day that coats her face with a smile and lets the occasional giggle flutter from her velvetine lips. She has to stop on multiple occasions to let them free. Laughter isn’t something has for long, and it tends to leave her for extended periods of time when it has left, so she cherishes very noise that comes from her that fits in the emotional category of happiness.
Hobgoblin, on the other hand,  cannot feel the same as her. One would think that with his body being ghostly and the display of bone that it gives for his entire skull enough to prove that he does not feel anything physically in his current state, and then be surprised to learn that he feels everything just as much as he would at any other time. This situation for his comfort is enough to have him edging into one of his notorious tantrums, but then there is the promise of her ending his healing session prematurely and leaving him to suffer.
So, like a mature man that she can be proud of, he stands with mouth agape, and proceeds to whine.
Because that’s what mature men do.
“Mouth huuuuurt.”
I know. It’s your fault. I told you that they sti-
“Hungry.”
She has to stop to sigh, thin wefts of the white flame that had previously been pouring from her mouth now sparking out into nothingness. The heat in his mouth brought on by it is fading, and in its place is the quick return of pain. They both know that she can feel it, not as strongly as him, but he has worked diligently in the past to ensure that when he is in pain that she must feel it as well. He will not fight his battles alone, even if they are his fault.
“Hurry up.”
But she isn’t. She’s caught up in something else, staring off at something that doesn’t matter because right now his face is on fucking fire and Sikeax, if you do not help-
“Bitch.”
Her head jerks around like he’s never seen it before, dark, unruly mane thrashing over and exposing the scar she typically worked so hard to cover up, blue eyes cold, and oh boy, he’s fucked now.
“What did you call me?” The voice rolling off her tongue is stern, and while at any other time this would be the perfect chance to piss her off to a new level of ‘You Fucked Up with Sikeax’, there is something else to keep the two of them busy.
Excitement perks into her, directly from him, and currently caught up in the mess of Hobgoblin’s typical bullshit, she doesn’t care to notice the sound of her name being said from a deep, husky, masculine voice that could make her head jerk around harder than Hobgoblin could ever imagine achieving. He is excited about the idea of Volterra’s dragons being around, minus the golden one who might be more deserving of the title that he had recently given Sikeax.
His head dances atop his body as he checks every which direction for them, excitement dampening as he notices that they aren’t around. But nonetheless, Sikeax can get him answers that he wants.
“Ask where Dragons.”
She, unlike him, is stuck in listening on Volterra’s speech about the jellyfish. She is fully aware of their mystical(as Hobgoblin would explain it) powers in inflicting pain, as anyone who lived on an island would know. Volterra does not smell of sea salt and aloe vera, and never once has she ever caught him smelling of such. She’ll spare him for the sake of his pride.
Hobgoblin’s eyes don’t leave the beast though, unlike Sikeax, who apparently has better things to do, like repositioning her name to hide a scar for the sake of vanity. There are tears in his eyes, and finally, after all this time, he finds a way to bond with Zhu’s Apa.
“Skullface eat too.”
The idea of Volterra devouring jellyfish in the same stupid fashion that Hobgoblin had done is enough to make her regret ever mating with him. Sure enough, there is a sign across his nose. A welp, and with the tears in his eyes, you’d think she would think he’d have lost a limb. Children have come to her crying less over cut legs in coral.
Maybe we should let big, tough badass himself suffer. I mean, that’s what ‘mature men’ like you two do.
She stifles her giggle at that, instead letting a smile creep across her features. She could milk this, but she has put him through enough in the past. His pride, she has decided, can take a hit.
“I know. I live on an island, you know, the Dragon’s Throat. I told you that long ago.” There is a faint touch of seriousness in her voice, but for the most part, she is oddly playful, her mood possibly perked by the fact that she gets to see the man she held some sort of hatred for cry over childish things and Hobgoblin’s pain due to him not listening to her warnings. “Give me your nose.” She waits for his head to dip, Hobgoblin now strolling away in search of the only thing he really cares about other than himself and food.
An unworthy kiss is given to him through her gifted fire, quickly working away at his burn. To think it was worth tears…
“Skullface cry one way. Explode if not. Tear back-up.”
The mere idea almost brings her back into laughter, but what was there to rationally explain to the father of her son(s) that the mental image in her head was one of him exploding from too many unshed tears in his body? There will have to be better conversation than that.
“Has Zhu taken the time to tell you that I do all the healing for the Dragon’s Throat though?” She ends it there, whether or not the pain has completely left his body or not. “If it happens again, somewhere not on your face, urinate on it.”
This time, Hobgoblin is the one to laugh, not her.

The soft sighing of waves fills her ears and head as she watches him speak, words drawn out and telling her about how he’s from the mountains. Distant, faded memories paint within  her mind, of how the Steppe seemed so vast and deadly in the belly of a harsh Frostfall that chilled her to the bones, of how the mountains climbed into the sky and tore it wide open with their peaks til the ceiling of the world bled a display of lights that she wishes would happen in the Dragon’s Throat but never will. She doesn’t know if he’s from that far north, but any words of mountains is quick to bring those images to mind.
They also always bring a touch of sadness that dampens her happiness, because that’s what home is and home isn’t something she can fully reach again.
Hobgoblin is eavesdropping in on her though, viewing her memories as if this was a movie made just for him.
“Skullface snowchild too?”
I don’t think so.
She collects herself. There are better times for reminiscing and right now wasn’t one of those times.
Her eyes follow his eyes as they leave her. His dragons seem to be enjoying themselves more than anyone else, making a better meal out of the jellyfish than Hobgoblin had gotten. Curiosity draws lines and more intricate expressions across her features as she watches them. Jealousy is poking in her side. A new thing is learned for the future.
And as if he had ever taken any real interest in Volterra, Hobgoblin is gone, moving lazily through the masses in the general direction of the pair, morphing halfway into another body. She doesn’t watch. The sight of him doing so twists her gut as it does it so freely, sliding out his skin with bones melting, vessels fading and fluids seemingly vaporizing, only to emerge from the other side completely reborn, looking as if nothing happened other than the hairless patches on his front legs and chest from dragon fire. She wonders if it hurts him, but even if it did, he wouldn’t admit.
“Which mountains?” The idea of finding someone who was given such a brutal start in life peaks her. “Before I joined the Throat, the outcast band my mother and I were in lived in the North. In the ice caves.” She hasn’t brought up the Assassins to anyone in years. Some things are better left in the past when they were obviously not welcome in the time that they had existed, and it had seemed that now time had swallowed all of them.
All of them but her, the last remaining member of the short-lived, never loved, always hated outcast band named the Assassins. But who was she to blame? With a name like that, no one would want them around.
He thanks her for the healing and all she can do is absentmindedly nod in response. Hobgoblin is looking in her direction, digging, prying, ripping at the seams at everything that she’s kept locked away in an aggressive search for a key for a lock that he cannot make even the slightest change in.
They’ve been together for nearly two years, and never once has she even cared to allow him to know the name of her own mother, or even her appearance. For him, Sikeax is nothing more than a being who faded into existence through defiance and hard headedly carried out with life as if to be the norm, and in return, it furthers his need and passion to figure her out.
“You assassin?”
I don’t want to talk about it.
“Why?”
This time it is her who leaves him in the darkness, hanging at the end of a question that will quirk him into madness within the next passing nights.
She isn’t surprised that Zhu hasn’t mentioned her to him. Zhu was never the child to care or love, or at least show it to her. When it came to touch, he was quick to draw away and/or complain, and dare if she tried to teach him things. As a child, any story that slipped from Adrixaura’s or Tonka’s mouth was enough for her to become glued to them for an undetermined amount of time that never seemed to end, yet with her son, it was the exact opposite.
Maybe colts were different in that way.
“I’m not surprised.” The words creep from her lips in a soft whisper. Her son, her only flesh and blood, never caring as to remember anything as he worked to ensure that each parent was a being split as far from one another as he could keep them, and as if to top it off, cut himself away, and promptly left.
“Zhu fine.”
That’s easy to say. He loved you more than he loved me.
No apologies are given this time. His heart is struck carelessly at a time when it is soft and weak, caught up in happy memories that he had of a child that he cared for just as much as Sikeax, maybe even more. Internally, he recoils, sinking in his wounds to tend to them while she rests in a slowly shallowing pool of happiness that is turning into mud with sadness.
She returns to Volterra as if nothing has happened behind the scenes, speaking in a way that does its best to hide how Zhu has drug her down. “Mhm. I joined during the endless night, right after the Basin invaded.”
“Why Basin invade Throat?”
They invaded the Edge too.
“Why?”
Because they’re monsters. That’s what they do.
He draws himself together, pulling all of his brain into one strangled mess as it attempts to process the information that she had given him. It never strikes her that he doesn’t know the brutality of an invasion, how much it scars and clouds the head and how thirsty for vengeance everyone can become in the aftermath of it. War creates monsters, and in its wake, it leaves broken bodies, broken families, and broken minds.
“Lena nice. Lena Basin.”
Healers are different from warriors. We don’t go to war.
“Why?”
I don’t want to answer that question.”
“Are you in any herds?” The topic is still in his head, looking for a place to resurface when she is doing everything she can to avoid explanation. She knows better than to tell him ‘that’s just the way things are’ because it’ll only upset him, but there’s no other answer to really be given.
In the time between any response that Volterra gives her, she hopes it’s the World’s Edge if he is aligned. The Basin is full of monsters, the Foothills Falls is full of those who seek and destroy lives for sport.
His next fine choice of words makes her regret her previous statement. Yes, urine helped, but one could not piss upon any wound that they had acquired and expected instant relief. The only thing that she could possibly imagine rising out of it was an infection, and it was best to save Volterra from idiocy before he became like Amara: a walking mess of death waiting to happen.
“Not in that specific way. It just treats the pain. Uhh..” She thinks for a way to word it politely, but there isn’t really a way to do that and this is also Volterra, a man whom she can only see having a pile of bricks as a brain when it came to the more finer things in life outside of violence. “I think the only thing that you’re going to get out of urinating on your wounds is going to be an infection.”
She hopes that it’s enough to take care of and expel the idea from his head entirely, but if he was to achieve anything out of it, she believed herself to be the first to find out.

OOC: Hobgoblin shifts into a serval when mentioned.

He isn’t like her. He isn’t hailing from the north, bones infused with ice and loving of all things related to snow and just how beautiful the void of the north is. But nonetheless, he comes from the same mountains where she had been brought into the world in, both brought forth in maybe a sense of false safety.
There was nothing safe about the Foothills. Even as the Falls, she cannot think of it as a place to be comfortable at. It is nothing more than damnation, and the thought runs a twisted expression against her face, drawing her nostrils as they rise and fall into a mess of valleys and mountains. She doesn’t mean it, but she hopes he doesn’t notice when it fades with speed. She should have better control.
“Foothills?”
Please. I can’t.
She’s upset and good at hiding it when she needs to, but there is never a way that she can hide how she’s really feeling from him. His mental brows have been corralled and knit into knots, eyes soft and head worrisome. The word that they both know will come soon enough doesn’t arrive, and in return, she almost thanks him.
The Grey, whether they still exist or not, haunts her. They’ve stained that part of the world permanently with their presence and their actions. One does not help by killing.
“I’ve never been to the heavenly fields, except for when I first met Hobgoblin.” It’s not a lie even though she feels like it is one. It’s heavy on the tongue and pulling her throat tight, as if she can’t force it out completely. Hobgoblin had been born there, and she had received him there, but no other memory is held to that place.
Just another place with a name that she has no purpose for, a little too close to something that she’s too scared to experience.
Can we go back to the north?
She captures him entirely, grasping his head and body as she asks him if they can go there. They’ve never questioned one another on these topics, instead opting to act as they please while the other follows without question, two bodies functioning nearly as one, as well as two very opposite people can.
“Have you tried Aloe Vera?” Probably not, because I’ve never seen it grow outside the Throat. “It grows like crazy in the Dragon’s Throat. Takes away the pain of sunburns and helps heal them and keep them from happening. I could get you some and show you how to use it sometime.” The idea of him with a sunburn doesn’t come to mind much, nor has it ever. Her coat is pale, his reminds of her of the night, her skin is soft, his, well, she thinks that it is like stone. He doesn’t seem to crumble, even at the harshest touch.
Discomfort swells in her like a rising wave. It touches her shores, and slowly overwhelms in the form of fear. She has nothing to be scared of at this point, so it must be- oh.
Oh.
OH.
Hobgoblin was drawn himself into a submissive position at the smoke vaping from the Dragon’s nostrils. Hobgoblin, a creature who gives zero damns about a single thing other than himself and would willingly destroy worlds at any chance just for sport, does not submit to a dragon because the overgrown mongrel can produce a bit of smoke.
Neither of them, definitely she, is going to have the agony of 3rd degree burns again over a fucking jellyfish.
“Why you little...” Her voice is hard and slow, slithering from her lips like a long, drawn out hiss that has been held in too long. “BITCH.”
Hobgoblin jumps, leaping with his long body twisting mid-air, tucking his tail between his legs like a frightened dog because hell if he isn’t terrified at the response that Sikeax gives as they equally sprint, his upon landing and her’s a fearless charge towards the golden beast.
Later on, he’ll look back on this with smug pride. Sikeax has charged a dragon for him.
Teeth do not flash behind curls lips and her horned skull doesn’t dip to threaten. She has no intention of harming the beast. Volterra could easily wound her more than she could the dragon for hurting it, and here it seemed they had gotten along well on this meeting up until it made it clear he lacked the effort to discipline his companions.
No wonder Zhu acted the way he did.
“You do not burn him. You do not burn anyone, do you hear me, anyone,” She draws out the pronunciation of ‘anyone’ to add much needed emphasis to it. “over anything as meaningless as food when there is more than enough to go around. You share.” Hobgoblin shifts uncomfortably near Vérzés, watching Sikeax mother yet another thing that she didn’t need to. A pleading glance is given to his friend and then Volterra, as if to ask for forgiveness.
“I’ve raised two overgrown sons and Hobgoblin and don’t think your cute little fire trick is gonna stop me from getting you to act like a lady. If you want to burn him, then burn me because I will heal myself and then hunt. You. Down.”
She ends it with a snort, firing it in the direction of the dragon, and then turns to greet Volterra with a relieving sigh, now half-expecting some sort of retort from him. They weren’t her’s to treat this way, but Hobgoblin was a large portion of herself that would find herself empty without, and his problems are her problems.
“I’m sorry, both for that and what did you say?” She pulls herself together like the situation didn’t phase her, silently grinding her gears in the back of her head. Hobgoblin slinks towards a jellyfish of his choosing, promptly latches his claws into the bell of it, and drags it back to his choice of placement. Yellow eyes watch the pair as he chews in silence, wishing he could bring the topic up to Vérzés for conversation.
“Endless Night.”
Huh?
“Skullface ask Endless Night.”
Oh!
“Uhh… Are you not that old?” What a stupid thing to ask. If he doesn’t know it when she calls it out straightforward, then chances are he isn’t old enough to have experienced it.
Her ears swing back and droop at the thought of thinking about it, even speaking on such a subject. Those were very foreign times compared to the current state of Helovia, but Hobgoblin’s curiosity has been stirred and she can only imagine that Volterra is the same way. “When I was just a baby, probably no more than season or so old, the Sun, it just kinda, well,” There isn’t a correct way to form her words. Vanished? Left? What more is there to say?
“Sun explode?”
No.
“left. I feel asleep at night with my friend after swimming in the ocean, and when we woke up it was still night. When I left to go home, it was night. But it was a funny kind of night. There were these glowing trees,” Oh yea Sikeax, you were totally on tons of weird herbs back then to have hallucinations like that. Hobgoblin snickers at her thoughts. “there wasn’t a moon or any stars for a long time, and even then it didn’t end. The grass wasn’t growing, there wasn’t anything. It was like living in a void but where you weren’t totally in the void, like on the ground with everything like you can remember it, but at night. Looking back, it makes me feel like I was dead and everyone else was too.”
Hobgoblin is swollen, staring with eyes now wide with amazement. “I hope it’s something you never have to experience.”
“Why Sun back?”
I don’t know. I just don’t. Everything just happened.
Volterra is quick to save her, a hand that he probably doesn’t know that he has extended but one that she grabs with haste and holds onto tightly. The dark didn’t bother her anymore as a repercussion of it, but the memory leaves her uncomfortable because it led to other things.
She frees herself of that subject as much she can as she tries to imagine control being something that she had experienced in the Dragon’s Throat, but in reality, all of her relationships had been well. Africa - oh god, how that name stings straight to her very core - and her had been close buddies, Kri had been kind but fierce, never once harsh in how she reigned, and well, Andromeda, her mentor, well…. She had been like a friend that wasn’t completely a friend.
But maybe warriors were given other types of treatment, and she had been given supremacy in her devotion to her learning. She can understand. Ampere led the warriors and then lead the rank leads, and was at times, a bitch.
“It’s not like what you imagine. You don’t have to submit or follow orders or give up freedom. The Throat is my family, a bigger one but it’s nice to have people around who you feel like care about you and your safety and maybe love you some. It makes you feel important. Everyone helps one another better themselves and at the end of the day, you can go to bed feeling accomplished. But, if you’re wanting to be a leader, please one to be remembered.” What an odd thing to tell him, but lately it seemed as if no leader left anything behind that made them noteworthy. No one cared anymore. It seemed as if it was another title that they could wear and be proud of, and then abuse.
Her voice is soft through the entire time she speaks, waiting for some sort of rough, low response, and instead, receives a chuckle. It catches her off guard, but in the odd relief it brings, she can only offer a weak smile in return.

Through effort and time, understanding at last and looking over the facts that at the two times that they had previously met each other was constructed by fear and upset feelings, one from the worry of death and the other at the unexpectation of having a child that she had never even intended, she comes to see that Volterra might possibly count as a good man, despite the messes that he leaves in her wake. She manages to discover them with ease and work through them with simplicity, easy to point out and define, sons that she’s seeing now are not the products of his mistakes and more of his terrible selection of mothers. She even guesses that they rise out of the same situation she was in, not with the exact same circumstances, but the overwhelming sensation of panic and fear at the arrival of children that they haven’t expected.
The things that she used to use as a ways to define him as a terrible being are returning to tell her that she placed the blame in the wrong place, and for this, she’s beginning to feel bad.
Parting her thoughts to sip at his words, a nod is given in hand to him. Words to small talk and polite responses are not coming from her most bountiful orchards.
For the actions she’s dealt, reality finds a way to remind her that some things are best left to others. She is not brave, battle-hardened, only vicious because both of her sons are sired by a brutish man that she can only ever imagine on the battlefield like he was created and forged exactly for that purpose, creating only boys who are the same way who need guidance to keep them from things she doesn’t want to see them be. Warlords.
Had this been any other time, she might have admired the female. Against those that she is paired to, she is striking in comparison, godly, power set in life and vibrant in the places they lack.
But Sikeax’s head was centered to other topics, and she doesn’t take the time to even start to know Vadir when she takes the leap. Vadir is just another mistake on a growing list, one that as her mind catches up to her body, sprinting and gasping for breath, pleading with her to think, even just for a second, shuts her eyes with what has the possibility to be the last time. Does she welcome the end of her time at the mouth of her mistake, the heat working through her body and sending her into shock, thinking out final thoughts as her body follows instinct that recoils her into a submissive state, tucking her legs beneath her and ass into the ground?
There isn’t enough time for her to think those thoughts with the way things are going.
Surprise overtakes her when it never comes. Hobgoblin is wailing, not audibly for Volterra and his winged reptiles to learn of his attachment to her, but deep within both of them. Most of all, he doesn’t want her to die, but there is the stress of the sudden acceptance that if it was possible from him to live onwards without her, that he wouldn’t be able to feel life to its fullness. He almost wants to scream and leap upon Vérzés for the barking laughter rolling out of him like the waves from the sea when the Dragon’s Throat has a tropical storm because how dare Vérzés react in such a way to these things? Sikeax could have died, and in the process, unknowingly taken him with, and here his one friend laughs.
And because Hobgoblin is a beast who thinks only of his thoughts and not of how others take things, he scrunches up disgust on his features. Any food in his belly has gone sour. What there was for him to feast upon around him is nothing more than corpses that he can’t find any pleasure in, tightness swelling in his throat as he feels the arrival of what? Sadness? Depression? Disgust? Failed expectations?
He isn’t sure when the tentacles are lines of nails that he leaps and dances over, greeting the ocean like he has felt Sikeax do many times before, preparing to shield himself against any jellyfish lingering in the void-like body, and then promptly changes his appearance. The suction of air that had been swept in is not nearly the correct amount for this body when he throws himself into sea grasses. It holds longer than intended, and when he surfaces, not taking the time to look back at them, his gasps for air are vicious and greedy.
Sikeax stands with all of her physical expression sunk at his absence. Volterra has done such a wonderful thing for her, but Hobgoblin stands to believe that there is nothing good out of it. She, on the other hand, can find their discovery of humor in the moment, watching with terror tucked into her chest because there is Death herself waiting for her, clawing at stone with ferocity with just how much she wants her. Is this not what she had asked for in the first place? Her over Hobgoblin?
If she had really died from Vadir’s flames, something that was a real world thing and could have easily happened if Volterra hadn’t been there to save her, Hobgoblin would have died with her. It wasn’t known between the two of them, but had it been, then she would had withheld to escape selfish mistakes.
The man that she now owes some sort of debt to is, in what she can imagine, complimenting her. It makes her even more uneasy, sinking downwards because Hobgoblin is distancing himself and leaving her more and more alone, in a dark place that leaves her feeling bare and exposed.
I need you. She whispers to him on hushed thoughts, sadness holding onto fear tightly as the two emotions make feeble attempts at comforting one another like lost souls who have found someone they needed who isn’t the right remedy to their ailments. It’s okay. He didn’t mean it like that.
When he doesn’t respond, she feels herself give way at last. What had once been such a wonderful day is now blued by mistakes and bravery that she shouldn’t have used.
“I shouldn’t have done that.” It flees her lips in a soft tone, hushed by ocean waves sighing in disappointment and hopefully far from Volterra’s capturing ears.
“Thank you, for that. You didn’t have to do that, but it was really nice of you. If you ever need something in the future, healing, a place to stay for a bit, whatever, consider it a thank you for it.” Because it wasn’t just like you saved my life.
Hobgoblin scuffs, diving deeper and tempting a shark that is obviously becoming stressed and aggressive in his presence, curling his long body around and flashing his teeth in its direction as the beast makes an attempt to flee. The hunter in him has him follow suit.
Please come back.
“You come to sea. We leave. North.”
The idea doesn’t make her feel bad. All of their shared words are catching up to her in the end. The conversations are increasingly pushing lines that make her tail swing uncomfortably, thrashing against invisible flies that she can’t imagine enjoying the salty air much. It settles into her sunburns littered atop her spine and reminds her of how much standing still is a curse, and there is little shade to spare her.
Yes, the sea sounds lovely, but she will not be rude in parting. Not yet.
She gives him her all, a last ditch effort at pushing through the swamp in her personally dug grave that is becoming a vast system of caverns.
His age is a number, one that encourages her to count backwards and bring forth more things, but the memories are blurred, haunted by a trail of death and oh yes, that familiar feeling of panic at the mental sight of a dead body left to rot in the Sun. No, she won’t bring that up to him. Not today, not tomorrow, maybe not even ever.
Those days stained her and the Dragon’s Throat, reminded of her fluttering heart and the giggling she couldn’t control herself from releasing at the presence of Cera when he won her heart like a top shelf prize at a carnival game.
Some things are best left forgotten.
“Four and a half.” It thrusts forward like a blunt stone thrown into a still lake, looking for a way to open without giving it all.
He is her’s the entire time she speaks, comforting her and quite possibly offering her a bit of confidence in herself as he shows obvious interest to her and what she takes as emotion when his ears move slightly, but they are prompted by his attentiveness to his dragon in her prison. She doesn’t let herself follow. She will not look death in the face again. Not for a long time.
In the water, a life is taken, teeth sinking into a thrashing body as two entities fight from control, blood staining blue as stress slips off of Hobgoblin’s mind like a chainmail glove.
Another nod, another wordless response to statements she isn’t sure she has enough words to push out. This topic is unsettling, another remind of things that had gone to pass and things she will have to overcome in the future.
Just not today. Possibly, a different Sikeax will have to exist for her to face those wholeheartedly.
Embarrassment peppers her features when he asks her for an idea of time, shifting her facial expression to fit her feelings. Time has always been a fleeting thing for her. She had never really paid much attention to it in those days, heart and mind both equally set on spending as much time as they could manage with Amara, tucking herself into Tonka’s side(her body burns with agony and jailed tears at the sweet memories that the bay stallion had taken part in creating) and listening to any stories she could manage out of both her mother and him(the man who should have been her father). She should know better than to crush herself over the things that commonly plague children, but now that it affects her, the discomfort of it makes her regret.
Mostly how she should have counted and enjoyed every second with all of them, her mother, her father, Tonka, Kilchii…
Stop.
Hobgoblin hums in the back of her head, like he tries to comfort himself past her thoughts. They aren’t his, things he’ll never experience have the head to remember. Just pieces of things that aren’t a part of him and are in turn, nothing.
“I don’t know. It didn’t feel like long, but at the same time it felt like forever. You know, time is one of those things you never think of as a child.”
Illness slips into her bones at last. She cannot take this subject much longer, and Hobgoblin’s distancing act is doing nothing to assist her. She needs comfort and different words, a change of thoughts.
At last, she gives in.
“Maybe we should change the subject. It’s not the easiest thing to talk about these days.” Guilt gives her a firm, rough kiss to the lips, spilling a whisper telling her that is it is selfish of her to pull them away from such an unique subject, one that the stallion could possibly profit from in his own little way. It’ll haunt her in the days to come.
His tellings of wishing to become a king are worthy enough to make her smile, even chuckle to herself lightly. It draws her out of her head for brief, lingering seconds, thinking over youthful leaders forced to stand at Gaucho’s dominating side, small, weak in comparison, not yet proven and probably not completely ready for what was going to come to them. “That’s not something to worry about. There is no such thing as ‘boy-kings.’ Just leaders who need to prove their worth regardless of age.”
She sweeps her head seabound, searching for a glimpse of Hobgoblin. Another silent plea for his return that is flatlined and ignored.
“I don’t think you have a single thing to worry about. Do what you must when you feel like you’re ready.”
Silver slips out of the sea, gasping breaths as his ignorance to his survival needs is punished. He fades out within seconds, gone,, like many other things.

OOC: Honestly this post is so gross?? like bro i'm so sorry
also this is totally the longest fucking post i've ever written why must you and vol give me such wonderful muse and sia some damn feelings
Hobgoblin changes into his leopard seal form when mentioned and is a total salty buns ignore him