i lit a flame in my heart to guide you home

Alysanne had to wonder that if that had been politeness, what would this mare be like when she was being rude? But that was some lingering bitterness talking and she quickly pushed it aside, unwilling to let it affect the mood she was in now or poison this conversation as it had the last. She listened with sympathy as she got something close to an apology, a tense admittance that Isopia hadn’t meant to sound hostile.

How much of what had happened had been what Isopia had said and how much of it was how Alysanne interpreted it in her anger?

She had come here with the intention to be honest so she would be - a gentle frown darkening her green eyes as she spoke again. “Lately I’ve been getting very… defensive about the Edge, about my place in it. How well I’m doing as a leader. You may not have meant to sound hostile but our conversation was just one of many that has made me feel so insignificant, useless, and stupid... and I reacted poorly.” Alysanne responded to Isopia’s explanations and confessions with one of her own, attempting to explain why she had reacted in the way she did. She felt like a second-class ruler with all those groupies that flocked to Tembovu at every meeting, scorning her as they walked by. Alune and Tilney’s very loud, vocalized opinions of her still stung - and they would for a long time. The wound on her chest would heal long before those ones did.

The surprised reaction she got for giving over the leather bag brought forth a small light to Alysanne’s eyes, softening her expression. She was accustomed to being asked why she did things that she thought were just simple, kind gestures. There were dozens of reasons why Alysanne wanted to give her the bag but which ones would she be able to explain? The mare before her confessed that she was lacking in social customs so Alysanne wanted to try to explain it as logically as she could, hoping that would bridge the strange language barrier that existed between them. She wasn’t very optimistic that she would succeed - her emotions always easily befuddled her logic.

Some of her reasons were political, of course, but most of them, if she was being honest, were more personal. The simplest of all being that she wanted to give the back to Isopia, and to Cowboy. But the explanation that came from her had a little more substance to it. “Because peace, that is peace with you and with the Falls, is more important to me than a gift that had been stolen from someone.” Though their acquaintanceship was brief so far, Isopia was so much more important to her than the bag - she longed for a relationship with the younger mare. And there were plenty of reasons for that too - because she loved Kahlua, because she should have tried to care for the girl when Kahlua had disappeared. “And because you were right that stealing isn’t right. This bag should not belong to me so I would like to give it back.”

A small pause before she asked quietly - “Does that make sense?”