the more people you love
the weaker you are

Romina is trying to find her brother, for a change. Which is odd, considering normally she just waited for him to find her, as she'd essentially trained him to do. Conditioning for the sake of safety. Pavlovian training to ensure he would always, magnetically, find himself at her side. So he could not leave her, never wonder at the better things in the world that she knew existed beyond their bubble of one another. To keep him chained to her side, ever adoring of her, she would willfully wrap the blindfold around his peaceful eyes and whisper that the world was too cruel for someone like him. That only she could love him in the way he deserved. Because she could not afford to lose him.

Romina didn't really understand that what she was doing was "wrong" in the moral sense. Her mind was too scientific, too innocent and unworldly to comprehend why her codependence with her twin was so dangerous. But in the wake of Kiada's abandonment, she held on ever tighter to her twin as if fearing he would be next. Disappearing into the distance without a single word of goodbye, a departure heralded only by her mother's stoic, grieving face and deadened voice. She hadn't been the only one to lose a friend, after all. But at least she had received a goodbye.

So that's how she ends up here, tentatively stepping back into the Threshold. The place she and Kiada used to explore together, and her heart hurts so deeply that she just...stops and stares at her chest, eyes a bit wet, not understanding. Her scientific mind is still childlike, and she doesn't know how an emotion can prompt such a profound physical response. Her tiny hooves trail her backwards away from the imposing stretch of shadows beneath the sunlight, feeling suddenly barren and aware of her vulnerability without Kiada there at her side. Her antlers flicker into flame with the onslaught of emotion, dancing colorful hues across her pinched face, shadows hanging in the hollows of her caricature.

For a moment she almost leaves, unable to handle the memories of the bantering and laughter that always came to pass with Kiada in these lands. But sound of movement pricks her large, soft ears, and curiosity tugs at her. She bites her lip, indecisive, before edging closer towards the stream she can hear in the distance. A reminder of the crass, foal-hating mare she and Kiada came across last time slows her steps as the beautiful golden woman comes into view, and she hangs nervously in the shadows of the stream, not sure how to approach or what to say. Her normally suave acting dismantled by the emptiness at her side, throwing her entire axis to the left, the world shifting with it. More a child now than she ever has been.

"Hello?" And curses herself for the tentative waver of her vocals. Emboldened by her self-anger, she strides farther out towards the woman, toes dipping into the water. "Are you new here?" Best to find out first, before she went off on the welcoming tangent she and Kiada had eagerly composed and rehearsed when they first decided they wanted to become recruiters like their parents.

Romina