so i listen to the    wind for an answer

Kindness comes in many forms, he says, and she smiles and nods at that, a true statement if there ever was one. In this very place, she’d found kindness in the form of a black stallion and a red ruby. Today, she finds it in a stallion with a history she doesn’t know, but kind words and she thinks, a large heart. His docked tail is a curiosity, one she is tempted to ask about but feels like it might be too much like prying. They know so little about one another, and she imagines that like her, there are probably ghosts in his past. Not because of anything he has done or said, but simply because she’s not naïve even to think no one else has ghosts. Most horses do, from what she’s learned over the years. The only thing that differs is the amount and the form of them.

She doesn’t follow as he turns his course, but she stops and looks around the area to see if there’s anything else she can find. Before long, Barty is back, and she’s failed to find anything else colorful that is also a rock. There are plenty of colorful things to be found, but the Goddess didn’t need flowers or leaves.

“Is it? It feels so short and yet like a lifetime all at once, if that makes any sense at all.” She’s not sure how to explain it better. The Edge has become her home, and there are days she wakes up without a thought of Morham, and even when the thoughts of Morham do come, they feel like dreams instead of a recent past. The hole in her heart is forever present, but it has become almost normal for her, like an old injury that will never quite stop hurting, but that you at least stop noticing. “I’m originally from a smaller place than here, called Morham. It’s rather unknown and unremarkable, I suppose, though the magic there was elemental. Once, I controlled the winds,” she smiles at that memory. Strange how the loss of her magic is the easiest thing for her to cope with, but perhaps replacing wind with healing had been enough. And now, replacing wind with leading, though she was still working on some healing magic of her own.

Stranger still is how easily she talks about it with him now. Rarely does Lyanna bring up the topic of her old magic, mostly because it didn’t seem to matter much to her anymore. But with Barty, she feels like her old self, like the girl that could have once demolished the trees around them with one mighty gust. Not that she would have wanted to do so. The Deep Forest was beautiful. The trees around them felt like friends to her, reaching out to gently caress her back in a fond hello.

Her ears flick in his direction again as he speaks of himself. She laughs as he describes his old band of rogues with hearts of gold, and her laugh is soft and pleasant as it always is, amused by the description. Her teal eyes twinkle slightly as she swats him with her tail again, just a little harder than removing flies might require. “That sounds about accurate, I think,” her grin wide and playful as she speaks. “Did you travel around then? Or did you have a home base?”

lyanna