Isopia looks up, and rather than staring blankly and without comprehension at the ruby-eyed stallion approaching and his pack of dragons, there is a spark of knowing in the depths of her golden gaze.

But it isn't the way it was before.

After their last meeting, Isopia insisted that Hubris tell her everything. And she meant everything. So ultimately, her plan of forgetting Volterra had really not lasted long at all. Only...only Ophelia had removed more than her memories when she'd used her magic on the Mountain. Inadvertently her love had gone too. Her love was all tied up in her memories of the monochromatic man before her, and when those were removed, so too was the emotion she had associated with him. Hubris had flooded her mind with everything that had ever happened between she and The Indomitable. Only...only it was like looking at them through a mirror. It was like it was all happening to someone else. 

She watched herself as a child stumble upon the hatching of the red, arguing that naming him after blood was a bizarre choice. She watched the girl and boy stop a wildfire, and she watched them build her hot-tub. Memories that, when she possessed them, caused warmth to stir inside of her belly, now just filled the black spaces of her mind, but did not stir her soul.

She remembered him...but...

...her heart didn't. Only her mind.

"That makes sense." Isopia replied levelly, her voice neutral. 

Hubris looked to Verzes, wanting to cry instead of welcoming someone new into their family. The bronze leaned heavily against the red, sighing into his friend's shoulder, and wishing he had done more to avoid the future currently unfolding before him. 

I loved you. Isopia thought, staring at Volterra as if it was for the first time. She traced the contours of his face and his shoulders with his eyes, and though she now remembered him, it was like she was seeing him new again. In a way, he was new again. Because she didn't remember him in the right way. 

And you.. Flashes of Aithniel merged before her eyes and her brows tensed slightly. You slept with her..and that hurt my feelings.. It was confusing and bizarre to think about in the first-person context. She could understand why someone in the same situation would be upset, it just didn't seem to be the sort of thing that she would be upset about. Saying it hurt her feelings sounded so pathetic and childish, but it was the truth. Only her feelings ran deeper than most, because she kept them so guarded. He'd broken her, and that was something she never thought would be possible. Then again she never thought she could fall in love.

And yet she had been.

"I-" She was going to say remembered, but that wasn't quite right, and the two of them had had more than enough not-quite-right words shared between them for a lifetime. "Hubris showed me everything. The memories I erased of you. He gave them back."

Raising his eyes, unsure of what Volterra's reaction would be, the bronze dragon merely shrugged, his attention falling back towards the shining egg which had begun to rock and roll around.

"Before you asked me how I could do it. If you meant so little to me that I would rather just erase you than deal with you." She began, her golden eyes finding it hard to rise and meet his. Even after all they had been through, it was still so hard for Isopia to talk about her feelings. "It was the opposite. You meant too much, and I knew you wouldn't change..." Her quad horned head shook slightly, but there was no judgement in her voice.  She remembered every word he had said to her, before he'd stormed away. It was all those accusations that had allowed her to force Hubris to restore her memories - the parts that he could anyways - and she felt she needed to defend herself.

Her past self.

"I didn't think we were worth more than that, but then you slept with my cousin..My blood. That was upsetting. And then I found out how many others there were...and.." Her head shook again, as if trying to see through a fog or parse something she couldn't quite articulate. "I told you once to follow your instincts and live a life unrestrained. I am not going back on that now...I suppose I thought that if I meant so much to you, loving only me would be enough. It wouldn't be a restraint it would just be.." Ugh. This sort of thing really wasn't in her wheel-house. She sighed, and tried again. "...Enough to satisfy you." 

As for his other criticisms, of not deserving the good, that she should go to hell, she offered no comment. Perhaps he was right on those accounts, she really didn't know.

All the while her voice was calm and easy. These things should have caused her throat to close, caused tears to fall from her eyes, but they didn't. She was talking about a life she no longer was appropriately tethered to...a life she could remember but not feel.

"Our son...I took him from you, from the world." She said. Now her voice was soft.  "It was wrong of me. I do see that now. But I couldn't let him grow inside of me, knowing how you made me feel. I've never hurt like that before - not when I learned of your children and all of the other women..." Again, that subtle shake of her head. "I gave birth to him, but he was already dead. I buried him myself..."

As her voice trailed off, the egg began to crack open.

@Volterra