tiamat

like the ocean kissed the sky—

“But I am a bad man, Tiamat.”

His words have her ears swiveling backwards while her blue brow puckers, the paleness of her eyes growing intense with concern. “Rikyn—” she tries to interject, but the dark stallion continues, seeming truly convinced that he belongs with the shadows and demons of the world—a possibility that the sea maiden sees no chance in, no matter how passionately her dear friend tries to convince her. He might not be perfect, and he might have made some grave mistakes, but there is nothing that Tiamat cannot overlook—because, right now, she sees goodness in his heart. She sees hope.

He falls into a moment of silence, and with her lips pursed together, it is all the blue mare can do to not shake him (gently, tenderly) out of his miserable haze. “Rikyn, don’t you see?” Her voice becomes vehement, and her eyes search his without looking away, the distance between them diminishing again as she leans unconsciously forward in her passion. “Listen to yourself! You try, you want to be good. Doesn’t that make you better in itself? Would a truly bad man want and try to be better, to be good, even if it’s only for the ones they hold dear?” She pauses, allowing her words to settle over him, before she finishes with a definitive, “I don’t think so.”

Tiamat breathes heavier now, physically moved by the fervor that courses like adrenaline through her veins. Still, she does not avert her eyes from the stallion’s, willing for him to understand, to see what she sees in him.

Even when Rikyn confesses that all of this—these precious words, these feelings—would still be locked away without the peculiar rock, she is not deterred from her faith in him. In this, the ocean maiden is uncharacteristically stubborn, clinging to him in the way warmth clings to light. “Either way,” she says to the stallion, softer now, “I appreciate you opening up to me.” Sapphire lips curve into a grin, more intimate than those before, every bit sincere in her gratefulness of his honesty.

Feeling the warmth flood her cheeks again, she lowers her eyes. Arching her sleek neck, Tiamat reaches down to nose the rough stone that lies in the crook of her leg, nudging it towards Rikyn. “You can have your stone back, if you’d like. I won’t pry any more secrets from you,” she glances back up to him with a spark of mirth in her pearly eyes, the smile that twists her lips now more familiar, more playful. While part of her wishes to hold onto the small rock, to savor this moment for as long as she can (because she is unsure what will happen once the spell breaks), Tiamat doesn’t have the heart to hold the stallion against his will.

“Speech.”