She felt far too old and far too brittle to be committing these murderous acts. She had killed her family time and time again, bringing a sharp blade down upon their chances at happiness. At times Essetia considered herself a masochist. Opportunities that were so often served to her on lifelike silver platters always transformed into ashes of her own making, her fires setting everything around her ablaze. Even when the tears began to stream down her face, the soft firelight casting an evening glow across her blurring vision, she couldn't find reason enough to change the way she behaved. Somehow the pain soothed the petty aches in her broken, guarded heart.

Following the narrow path of wolf prints toward the Flats felt unnatural and somehow frightening. Instead of returning to lands of old, ones dear to her soul, Essetia found herself stealing away in the night, skittish and cautious of where and with whom she ended up. The former spy was not disillusioned about her asinine decisions to take flight when she should have stayed to fight, but time had already been mended. Her clock had long since been erased. 

As Romul wandered ahead of them both, Essetia was content enough to daydream about days that were now too far away. While she did so, she carefully traced the outline of her companion’s shoulders and the way they rose and fell with each tentative step. Time had worn the arctic wolf despite Essetia’s silent pleas for him to remain young and carefree forever. In some ways his aging was her fault, she could tell from the hardening lines around his gold-blushed eyes, but age had done just as much to change them both, which was why she didn’t linger on the worries for long. 

The sun had crept below the horizon line hours prior to the pair’s arrival to the Flats, but light had not fled from the skies entirely. Instead, it was replaced by the dazzling starlight of a Birdsong midnight. Clusters of silver and white were painted up above and down below the moon’s expectant face creating an iridescent blanket of scintillating illusion. It was the first time that Essetia and Romul had feasted upon such a sight and before they could make their way to the water’s edge, they stopped to gawk openly at the bounty of the stars. 

“What do we do now?” she questioned of the wolf, who turned his curious eyes to hers when the quiet words reached his tethered soul. He seemed to mull over her request, but did little to calm her mounting fears. Essetia had made plenty of ill-advised choices of late and Romul had taken to remaining silent about them. The mare couldn’t blame him for such drastic actions because she had forced him to leave his comforts behind too many times… She had to start digging her heels in if she expected that to change. 

The sweet peal of the Flats’ gentle tide was nothing like the soft rumbling of the Endless Blue, but it was soothing enough to draw Essetia closer to the water’s edge. As she fawned over the resplendent glistening of the stars scattered along the shivering tidal surface, the mare imagined her children alongside her. She pictured doing things far differently and with more patience than she had ever possessed. Yet, somehow she had again found herself entirely alone…

“Not truly,” Romul whispered begrudgingly, his voice just as strident as the many times he had scolded her for losing her composure as well as her family. Though it had become more a force of habit than of merit, Essetia turned toward the wolf with her eyes cast down, “I’m sorry.” Romul appeared to acknowledge her sentiment, but continued to trace the long stretch of sand as it blended into the careful eternity of starlight. The former spy looked on after him, compelling him to forgive her for her slights, but received cool silence instead.

It wasn’t until Romul had turned, his gilded scrutiny focused elsewhere, that Essetia became aware of her onlookers. In situations prior, her wolf had always come to greet strangers before her, but things had changed so drastically that the mare wasn’t surprised when her companion remained at a distance. Somewhere inside, Essetia’s heart was being torn, but she hadn’t the time to show it. Rather, she confronted the approaching maiden and her extraordinary consort with some practised caution.

In the shadows of the seamless astral plane, everything appeared much more surreal. Starlight glanced across the polished skin of what could only be an oceanic creature, though Essetia was unsure how it had come to exist alongside the fairer woman with sea-kissed hair. When the stranger called out to her, the spy was nearly speechless in her attempts to reason how a Leviathan had blurred the boundaries between land and water. “Companions... Romul initiated from afar, “defy more than we know to be with their bonded.” His answer was reminiscent of the love that had developed when first they met. It had been quite some time since Essetia had been able to coerce a caring word from his mouth. “So it seems,” she responded more hopefully.

“It is a wondrous night,” Essetia conceded when at last the stranger and her Leviathan were close enough to reach out to. However, at that point, the young whale had taken to hiding behind her companion whilst the spy fixated on the piercing blue of her eyes. “I’m Essetia,” the mare replied when she’d returned her pale stare to the seafaring mistress, “and that is Romul,” she stated flatly while gesturing toward her bonded. The two pairs were nothing like one another- it had been far too long since Essetia and her wolf had been on the same page, let alone on the same plane long enough to dote upon each other. It was something that had become lodged between them like a splinter, painful and irritating, and caused friction every time they spoke.  As the wolf’s name slipped from her tongue, the beast himself seemed to take a renewed interest in his companion and her dealings. She wasn’t sure if it was returning customs or envy that brought him back to her side, but his curiosities were focused solely on the juvenile orca and the way it peered innocently up at Essetia.

“My apologies, this is the first time that Romul and I have seen anything like your Nimue,” the spy offered sympathetically. Despite her concern for the wolf’s intensive behavior, he continued to brood over the whale as the two mares made merry above.