The afternoon sun was strikingly warm against his back, the grass swaying about his ankles cool and damp from very recent rain.
 
He left Alysanne with promises to come and see her in the Edge soon.  When soon was exactly, Dragomir didn’t know, but he did know he would make sure to go.  He was tired of making promises that he didn’t keep, and, as the Threshold’s tall trees began to roll into emerald hills, he told himself that, starting today, he was going to be the sort of man who was always good on his word.
 
He, of course, understands that this means he will have to make amends, as well.  He knows that he has probably hurt those around him with his elusive recluse behavior, especially the World’s Edge, who had been relying on him.  There were others, too, Ranjiri being the one he couldn’t seem to get off his mind, and, as the clearing they had once picked flowers within passed by distantly, she came to him with as much clarity as she always did.
 
He frowns as he walks, still not entirely sure what it means, other than she must be more important to him than he’d ever hoped for her to be.  He might have asked his father about it, if he wasn’t sure his father would have reacted to the revelation that his son had caught feelings for a hybrid with, well, anger, at the least; his mother had been too ill to answer any of his questions, and so, he’d been left to Szello and Vihar.
 
They didn’t know about love or relationships at all, being what they were, but, their advice surprisingly wasn’t the worst that Dragomir had ever been given.
 
“Love is hard to come by, baby brother,” was what the speaking head of the siamese twins, Szello, told him (Vihar rarely spoke more than one or two words at a time, and ever with the eloquence Szello managed), “perhaps you shouldn’t care so much what dad thinks.”
 
Did he really love her though?  He’d thought it then, as he thought it now, but this time, his siblings aren’t here, and he can really think about it.  Alongside the mental recollection of just her name, her pretty face swims into view, and his heart starts thud thudding inside his chest.  Pausing in his step, he finds himself standing not far from the boundaries of the Hidden Falls, looking south to the Dragon’s Throat, where she’d been the last he’d seen her delicately alight on the sunlit sand alongside him, her beads and pale hair swaying about her elegant neck, red eyes vibrant, and alive; his crystalline gaze is wide, and surprised.
 
…maybe he did.

[ OOC:  He's outside the borders!  Didn't figure it was far enough to put the thread in the Deep Forest.  He'll be joining anyway more than likely. <3  Anyway OMG ALIIIIIIIIIIII ITS HAPPENING ]

memorablemoose & larfsalot @deviantart
dinpattern.com

I never really looked back on my life, but as I walked toward the Falls' border I found myself thinking back to when life was so much simpler. So much easier. I remembered being a foal in the Foothills and not having a care in the world aside from when Bear was going to find me in our game of hide and seek. Or when Cera and Midas were going to come from the Throat to visit. I was blissfully naïve about the hurts and pains and evils of the world and, sometimes, I longed for that again. I wanted to see all the good in the world and in everyone around me and not think 'what bad thing is going to happen next, or 'I wonder if they're as nice as they seem'. I wanted to not feel the pain of death and the sting of loneliness once more. 

It would never happen.

Thinking back, though, I realized how the days seemed to blur together. Every memory that made me happy seemed to all blend together along with my heartaches and my triumphs. Sometimes the heartache stood out more, sometimes old happy memories were enough to make me feel lighter and make me smile. I remembered the pain of watching Hototo die, but I also remembered playing games with him. The same with Midas -- I remembered his death, but I also remembered the time that I got to spend with him and how it had made me feel. In time I would be able to think about Dragomir and not be sad that he was gone, but instead think about our field and picking flowers with him. And of Gaucho and how much he had taught me. And ... of Rhoa and his love.

I sighed, my eyes closing as their faces resurfaced from my memories. One day this would make me stronger. Until that day came I would mourn them because they were my weakness ... because I loved them. It was a weakness that I could accept. It was a weakness that made me who I was and no matter how much it hurt I wouldn't change it.

My eyes opened and I comtinued toward the border, but I stopped cold when I saw who was standing there. I ... couldn't didn't believe my eyes. It couldn't be Dragomir, he'd been gone for so long and I'd looked everywhere for him. My head tilted as I stared in silence for what felt like an eternity. "...Drago...?"

"."

ooc:// love youuuuuuuu 

Two syllables dance through the air, and his head follows the tilt of his ears, a smile already there on his lips, because no one calls him that name, unless he calls them friend. The wind pulls through her pale hair and carries her perfume towards his dark muzzle as he turns to greet her; her pretty face is framed within his sight a fluttering heart beat later, his own dark mane ruffled aside in a stray gesture of the wind’s fingers, and, for a while, he simply looks at her.

The reasons are twofold: for one, his heart is currently too wedged against his soft pallet to make words possible, an anxious fear stammering through his veins that this is the beginning of the end of any sort of friendship with Ranjiri at all. The other is a gentler reason; the interconnected sensation of being a part of something much larger than yourself fills him, as if he’d always been meant to walk by this spot, to find her again, and the subsequent worry of what to do next. Even the bewilderment at seeing him again and the weary grief of loss is beautiful on her gold marked face, her gold kissed forelock pale against her dark skin, tangled and perfect.

Then, he notices more than just her presence, and his heart deflates, and sinks hard and cold like a swallowed chunk of ice into his gut.

He tries to keep his glass smile in place, though it’s fractured, and shudders in the wind. His heart feels more and more like a stone the longer he looks at her, images of Kahlua and Kaj trickling through his head. This time though, he wasn’t sure he could bare the ache that would surely rise at the sight of Ranjiri, and whoever she’d chosen to be her golden knight.

So, in an attempt to escape the horribly painful, downward spiral of emotions he found himself currently enveloped in, he says something, his pale eyes clinging to her ruby gaze, instead of the wide curvature of her body.

"Ranjiri," remarks Dragomir, trying to clear his throat of the emotional warble from its usually steady depths before continuing (as poorly as it works), "I…" He looks away to blink rapidly at the distance, before looking back to her, a sigh falling from him despite his best efforts to seem unaffected. "I’m sorry."

His smile falls away, piece by piece, the resonance of his apology striking away all his facades of having not hoped she’d be there, waiting by the sea, full of annoyance with his hermitic nature, and concern, as she had always been before.

I’m a fool.

"I shouldn’t have just left again, I know," he tells his hooves, hot pinpricks biting into the corners of his eyes, and refusing to let her see, "but I… I did what I always do. I let my nerves get the best of me and I didn’t think…"

That you’d not wait for me, or that I wanted you for as long as I could have you. I never think the things that matter until it’s too late, until it’s too far, too much…

"I missed you, though," stoically manages the stallion, though the tears that press like knives against his composure, trying to disguise the breaking of his heart with a soft, weary smile. He wants to tell her how he’d thought of her every day, or how very pretty she looked with the sunlight shining on her dark coat, but to think of it now hurts, the day-glow light of a reverie reunion now shadowed by the truth of what had truly come to be.

memorablemoose & larfsalot @deviantart
dinpattern.com

I.... I really couldn't believe it. I had spent so much time waiting for Dragomir. I'd waited in our meadow for him to show up and I'd waited on the shores near the Dragon's Throat for him, but he'd never shown up. Then I started looking for him and I'd searched everywhere that I could think. I'd gone back over the places that we'd visited -- our meadow where we'd picked flowers, the beach ... everywhere and I hadn't found hide nor hair of him and so I'd given up and I'd finally moved on. And ... there he was, walking right back into my life when I wasn't even looking for him anymore. I didn't know what to say or what to think. My emotions just ricocheted around from happy, to angy, to sad, to relieved, over and over again.

My mouth opened like I was going to say something then it closed again when he said my name. I didn't want my heart to lurch the way that it did, and I wanted to look away from him to compose myself, but I was scared. What if I did and when I turned back he was gone again? 

"i'm sorry." He said, and his smile began to chip away, taking with it pieces of my already fractured heart. My gaze fell to his hooves because I couldn't keep looking at his face and the expression that he wore. I wondered if it was hurt that I was seen on his face because reunions were generally emotional and painful. Then I wondered if it had been betrayal that I'd spotted because I was pregnant and he'd noticed it. I couldn't apologize, though. I wouldn't. I'd loved Rhoa and I would not regret the short time that I'd spent with him.

"I missed you, though."

"Drago...." I forced myselt to look up once more, to meet his gaze instead of continuing to be weak and stare at the ground. "Where did you go? Why didn't you tell me?" I asked. "I waited for you..." Until I'd given up under the assumption that he wasn't coming back. "I looked for you everywhere.... I was so worried that something happened to you and ... and when you didn't come back I thought that something had. I worried that you were hurt somewhere and I couldn't get to you to help... or that you were lying dead somewhere and ... and ..." ...you really hurt me.

I bit back those words because I didn't want this to turn into a fight, and said "I'm glad you're back, Drago. I missed you, too."


"."

"I…"

It was not betrayal, at least not on Ranjiri’s behalf.

She was still here, in the same world she always had been. Though she is now wreathed in the green, bountiful smell of the Earth’s realm, rather than the Sun’s warm, sunlit deserts, Helovia had always been her home. He stares at her, one word stammered through emotions that rise, fall, coil, and buck with his dearest friend’s words, and he finds that the only one who has done anything wrong, is himself.

Dragomir could not blame her for seeking love and acceptance. He could not hold ill will against the new curvature of her body, or the man sure to have made it so, for things that he had been caused with his sudden, wordless departure. No…

It was a betrayal. Of himself, and the weary part of him that craves to be at peace with anyone else.

Would he always be alone?

Was that why he had grown up with only his parents for company in the first place, to learn how to be at peace with this unfulfilled feeling?

Why was it then, that he kept wanting…

"My mother died," he rumbles, while the mourning gallery wails within his heart, black tissues fluttering. It had been odd to feel the sudden absence of her in his chest, but to say it out loud… it hurt. Suddenly, all the tears he’s managed to stoically keep hidden away begin to well, lingering as unshed glimmers in the corners of his crystal blue eyes. "She was very, very ill, when Szello and Vihar found me. She…"

He’d told her of his siblings, of course, during their time together, as he’d told her of the dragon island, and his childhood alone, with only the dragons for playmates. He’d told her of his mother’s prettiness, and her gentle heart, and he’d even told her of his father’s proud strength (though he had neglected to mention the dark faith and devotion to Nieque embedded in the Steadfast’s heart). He’d said enough of everything about his past for her to know that, when his much beloved sister had told him of his family in need, all those miles away, he had been consumed by a need to be with them.

He finds, though, that when it comes to discussing his Mother as she had been in her last moments, he cannot tell Ranjiri anything. Looking at her with a certain pleading expression, as if she could just pull the words from him, and leave the hurt they inspire buried deep within, where he has tried to hide it.

"She was dying, from the inside," his brows fold down, hard over his tear-stricken gaze, his mind fumbling over too many wrong words for the right ones, "she looked as she always has, just… tired, and frail. Like a flower that has been properly dried in the sun."

Or the petals in his pouches… our petals… and how their fragrance is still pure, though they are merely dust. He was afraid to touch his mother then, as she died in the meadow he’d been foaled in, afraid as he was now, to talk about what he really wanted to with Ranjiri.

Who? Is he here, so I can remain far away? Away where the sight of you and this family you have found, made, cannot hurt me, with how very badly I want it to be mine?

A dark line traces slowly down his cheek, another rolling into down on the opposite, as well. He looks, again, to his hooves.

"So you live here now?" he questions after some time, looking back up with a smile on his face, the dark tracks of his tears mocking the flimsy expression he uses to hide behind, "your dad would like that, I think."

[ OOC: drowns in the emotions omgggg ]

memorablemoose & larfsalot @deviantart
dinpattern.com

"My mother died."

His words hit me squarely in the gut and my mouth hung open for a moment before it snapped shut with an audible click of my teeth. It took the wind right out of my sails, the cacophony of emotions that had been swirling around relentlessly inside of me settled quite suddenly. "Drago... I..." But I couldn't say that I was sorry for his loss because sorry was never seemed good enough. I think the only one sorry ever made feel better was the one that uttered the words because they had nothing better to say. I could see the tears welling in his eyes and it made my hear ache that he had to feel that pain. "What happened?" I asked right as he began to tell me that she'd been ill when Szello and Vihar had come to get him.

"Oh, Drago." I said softly as I stepped closer. My own pain was forgotten in the face of Dragomir's and I wished that there was something that I could do to help him. I knew the hollow ache that came with losing a loved one all too well. "I would have gone with you." I murmured. "So you wouldn't have to face this alone." Because if I knew anything about Dragomir, it was that even with his family around he'd likely bottled his pain up and kept to himself.

"She was dying, from the inside."

He was fumbling for words, like he was searching for the right ones to describe what he'd seen and I stayed quiet to allow him time to, but I couldn't imagine what was worse. Seeing a loved one taken from you suddenly and violently or watching them slowly fade away until nothing was left but a shell of who they once were. I reached to press my muzzle against Drago's cheek to offer what comfort I could. "It's good that you went to see her." I think he would have regretted it for the rest of his life if he hadn't. I just wished that I had been able to meet his mother before she'd passed, because everything I'd heard about her made her sound like an amazing woman.

I stepped back, even though all I really wanted to do right then was wrap my wings around Dragomir and hold him until he felt better. The tears that I'd seen shining in his eyes finally began to roll down his cheek, but he changed the subject to my living in the Falls. "Yeah." I said. "I moved here to be closer to my family. My mom lives here, and my brother is around somewhere, and...." My voice trailed when he said that my dad would like that I was here. A faint smile made the corners of my mouth pull up and I nodded. "I guess he would, wouldn't he?" I was quiet for a moment as I thought about what my dad would think about my promotion to Czarina. "The uhm ... the God of the Earth asked me to be Czarina." I said, pausing long enough to take in whatever look Drago would give me at the news. "Do you want to stay here?" with me.


"."

As Dragomir had done for her not so many seasons ago, Ranjiri is swift to offer her comfort and concern for his lost parent. Her usual softness returns, concern rising from beneath her glower, and, though he’d have eagerly swam into her crimson eyes on any other day to bask in their offered care, today’s emotional state leaves her sympathy ringing with a sense of sorrow he can’t shake.

So, when she shuffles closer, her voice gently tending to each word, Dragomir feels his heart become a tight knot in his chest, the girl definitely right about one thing: he dealt with his pain quietly. Even when it feels like his heart is going to become mere dust before floating away, he keeps his tongue still.

She’d have gone with him?

So many parts of himself begin to writhe. Could she have? He thinks of Adalwulf, and the way of life that the otherwise upstanding and honorable man followed, and barely manages to withhold his frown.

No, Ranjiri could not have come with him. It eases the ache in his chest that, maybe, he’d been the one to blame for not being the man Ranjiri had chosen to keep as her own.

Her lips gently caress his cheek, where the tears threaten to trek. His head remains still, still as stone, his crystal eyes closing, really feeling the careful embrace, letting that dream settle down, warm and radiant, alongside the cold, bitter reality he found before him. Nodding in reply to what she says, he cannot find his words. He is sure she will understand.

His ability to speak retreats further within himself, glad that she’s talking now of her new life, to distract him from the life with her he’d gave up when he followed his siblings away. She speaks of her family, her mother, and her brother, and Dragomir tries his best to smile and join her in her joy. He wonders when she will mention the other part of her family, the part she has chosen, and made, but is not so eager to ask about them, either, preferring to hide in the unknown for as long as he may.

Roughly rubbing his cheek against his knee, he looks back up at her with surprise at what she says next.

"Czarina?" blusters the deeply voiced stallion, a proud smile flickering across his face, despite the cold, dark ache in his chest, "I am so happy for you, Ranjiri."

She’d be a great leader, he decided then and there, knowing from experience her bravery, and her ability to care for others with all she had. Even when others abandoned her, or abused the loyalty that bound them, Ranjiri was always there, waiting to take them back into her heart. She fearlessly charged into battle against Gods, and had always spoken up against, what Dragomir had determined through his own experience, anyway, to be the wickedness of the world.

Even though he feels genuine happiness for Ranjiri, the offer to live here, with her, in the shadow of the ache in his chest feels like too much; at the same time, however, he feels like he owes Ranjiri what he can give her, even if all he has is himself. She had, after all, always been his friend, eager to assist him through whatever tribulations he encountered, and what bigger trial could there be, truly, than ruling a herd? Having worked with Kahlua through a similar path, his heart cast aside for another, and his loyalty still tied fast to that which still beat in a woman’s chest, the crafter cannot help but inwardly dismay at the ironic luck he seems to have.

"I… I am not sure," he says, brows again knitting down, his eyes flickering down to his hooves in indecision, wanting so badly to ask the question he is equally afraid to know the answer to, "I wouldn’t want to be bothersome."

Or taken as a threat by a stallion who’s woman I clearly admire… he thinks, eyes trailing on her pregnant body as he lifts them back to her face.

"I have no desire to fight as a warrior should, and I am no longer able to make glass. While I can still work with nature itself, the items offer little in the way of longevity," continues the stallion, perhaps more to distract himself from his dark thoughts, than for any real purpose, "But if you need me, I can stay."

I want you to need me.

"I would do my best to serve the Earth’s people," sadly smiles Dragomir, "and you."

memorablemoose & larfsalot @deviantart
dinpattern.com

I could see Drago withdrawing into himself as he thought about something that I knew he probably wasn't going to share with me. Of course I wanted to know what it was that had made him get so quiet and look so contemplative, but I decided that if he wanted to tell me that he would. I knew from experience that being forced to give information, or to talk about something you didn't want to didn't feel all that great. I remebered Cera forcing me to tell him what was wrong when Midas had died. I remembered how I had resisted, how I'd felt when I'd finally uttered the words, and I remembered his reaction. So I supposed it was possible that there was something that Drago was trying to protect me from.

When he lowered his head to rub his cheek against his leg I took the chance to take a step back to give him back a little bit of his personal space. "I know it's hard to talk about it, Drago." I murmured. "But whenever you want to, I'm here." And that was all the pressing that I would do about his mother's death and whatever else was bothering him. I just hoped that one day he would take me up on my offer instead of silently suffering.

Our conversation moved in a much more pleasant direction and I smiled at his surprise at my promotion. "I didn't even think he knew who I was." I admitted, and it still shocked me that, out of everyone, he would choose me. "I just hope that I make him proud... and everyone else. I've never done this kind of thing before." And sometimes when I thought about it, it was absolutely terrifying. I just needed to have faith in myself and try my hardest to do right by the herd and the Earth God.

His indecision when I asked him if he wanted to stay in the Falls was ... concerning. I frowned, my head tilting as I regarded him. "You're not bothersome." I said, frowning. "Why would you...." Oh. Oh. I caught myself halway through my question and I was baffled at myself at how I could have been so stupid and blind. There I was, very obviously pregnant, asking Drago to stay in the Falls after he'd disappeared and come back. 

...he had to think that I'd moved on, and I had, but I'd been left behind again.  Only ... Rhoa couldn't come back.

"Oh." I said numbly, suddenly sinking back down into my own pool of despair. "He..." I turned my head, my teeth clenching together so tightly that it made my jaw ache. I knew that I didn't have to explain anything at all to Drago, but...

"He died." I murmured. "Something in the forest killed him." So no, you don't have to worry about being bothersome to Rhoa. Tears stung my eyes and I copied Dragomir's earlier movment and wiped my face against my foreleg. "I want you to stay." I said once I had somewhat regained my composure. "If you want to." I threw in after, but he already seemed to accept the idea. "Would you like to be a Mason?"

"."

He was glad she was as understanding as she had always been. Never the sort to find talking easy, even with his own parents, Dragomir found that is was almost so with Ranjiri. She had ever only become upset with him for good reason, and, even then, for short time frames; she had never judged him for his aspirations or his inner most thoughts (those he shared, anyway), and had always quietly listened to his rambling about ropes, bricks, greenhouses, or glass.

Even though his heart was in shambles at this time of his life, he knew that, no matter what, even if he was to vanish again tomorrow for months, or years, he would find her again. She might shout a bit, of course, but she would still care about him, he was sure, as he would never stop caring for her.

How far that concern went through her heart is a subject of pain, his mind diverting down a different path, this once comfortable summer trail now frosted and chill. He clings to the conversation between them both, clings to her ruby eyes, because letting them slip causes him great pain. If he looks at her, eye to eye, however, he can imagine that the green becomes the shore, and the whisper of the wind is the gentle ushering of wave against sand. He can pretend, at least for a small while, that everything is as he had left it.

He can even smile when she shares her astonishment that the Earth God chose her, a small chuckle rumbling deeply.

"Some God he’d be if he didn’t know you," he remarks with a smile, the relationship of his parents and their God, Nieque, having given him many insights into the behavior of divine beings, through their stories. While, surely, they were not all accurate, the God the Earth not being the blood-thirsting, racist war God that all the divines of Isilme had been, Dragomir assumed that by simply entering the realm of Helovia, you became known to the Gods who ruled it.

"Besides, you are very brave, and fair," he continues, just in case her disbelief was truly a guised request for support, "you’ll be a great Czarina, I’m sure of it."

The hold of his eyes upon hers falters, and the conversation does too. At first, she’s almost indignant, curious, a question almost making it all the way from her lips before it is stilled. Dragomir stares at his hooves, misses the pain the lances across her face. When he looks back up, it’s because she’s talking about that pain, and, looking up to see it there on her features, having so suddenly replacing the delighted, anxious wonder that had clung to it before, the stallion feels his heart clench, and break.

He… he died?

"Ranjiri, that’s… that’s terrible," he stammers with genuine concern.

The tricolor man is unsure what to make of Rhoa being dead. He feels empathy, and sadness for Ranjiri, and he also feels some relief about the fact that, whoever the father of the foal within her is, he won’t have to ever see them together, the family he could never have. Does that make him a bad person? He wonders.

Does it make him a worse one to want to take that family, now? Is it selfish of him to desire her, still, to so place himself in a void that had been made by sudden, early death?

Or did that make him a good man, willing to ease the suffering and hurt of someone he loved, willing to stand where others might turn away? She needed someone.

These thoughts steal him, roiling and battling for dominance within his breast. Meanwhile, the world outside keeps moving, the pretty mare wiping away her tears, and swiftly adjusting the subject; any other day, her question might have easily lured him away from the conflict within himself. Any other woman, anyone that mattered less…

Stepping forward, he longs to hold her, to shroud him in the warmth of himself, his heart against her own, stealing away her hurt and sorrow. He stills this desire, afraid of her rejection, afraid to appear too desperate, too swift upon the tails of disaster, though he truly means the gesture in a friendly (rather than romantic) way. She hides her emotions behind business, does not dally in the hurt, or pay it notice, and, being the sort to do the same to himself, Dragomir worries for her. Still, hadn’t she said it earlier, that this sort of thing was hard to talk about?

Perhaps all he could do was be here, after all, he decides, concern still marking every inch of his otherwise unremarkable face.

"I will be whatever you need me to be, Ranjiri," he tells her, meaning every word, "for as long as you’d like."

[ OOC: aka yes in the most sappy way ever ;_; ]

memorablemoose & larfsalot @deviantart
dinpattern.com