Lyanna’s smile and the easy, relaxed conversation that began was so welcome - even if the question of how Alysanne was doing, how she was settling in as Queen, weren’t exactly welcome themselves. “I’m alright… it’s been… an adjustment.” She added with a wry smile. Perhaps Alysanne might have gone into more explanation, but now didn’t seem to be the time. At first, she simply didn’t want to burst the happy, friendly bubble that was around them.

Only, it burst anyway.

She didn’t get more honest with her answers, because Tembovu joined them a moment later while Lyanna was beginning to explain that she had actually been looking for Alysanne. Her smile faded as she listened to her friend start to explain what was going on. The very first piece of news caught the painted mare off guard and she immediately reacted to it. “What do you mean it’s common knowledge that Toulouse invaded the Throat?!” Alysanne’s voice started to raise a little bit with incredulity but she got herself under control again, her ears flattening against her skull as she shot a glance at Tembovu. “Did you know about that?”

But there’s more so she is distracted from being too angry about being kept out of that loop. She remembered, of course, Iona mentioning that someone had crossed the Throat’s borders without permission but she didn’t know it had been him - the very Specter that they had put on probation barely any time ago at all.

The rest of Lyanna’s story is listened to intently, Alysanne being careful to listen to every word and remember them.

Their illustrious Elephant King has a completely passive response to the news that Lyanna had shared and it needled Alysanne even more - the feathers on her wings bristling. “What?” The incredulity is back into her voice, though thankfully she kept herself a few notches down from being hysterical. She fixed Tembovu with her bright green eyes, trying to figure out what was going on through her co-leader’s head. “Tembovu. Toulouse is already on probation, we can’t just pretend this discretion didn’t happen.” That was exactly what his plan of ‘let’s sit on this’ felt like to her and she would not let this get swept under the rug with everything else. “Even if the Throat is unaware that one of our members invaded their borders, we know. How is that not something you want to react to? You lost it on me for rolling my eyes at you once but now we’re just totally fine to let our members do something like this?.” Perhaps it really was just her that he seemed to get joy out of being the behaviour police.

Her attention flickered briefly to Lyanna and she felt sorry for the dear Moon Doctor, having to listen to this, but she was also curious about what her thoughts were on this. “And what about if the Throat ever does find out and they find out we kept this from them? I, personally, would like to stay on good terms with them. We have no reason not to trust them and treat them in this fashion.”

Alysanne

the devoted