if there's a light at the end, it's just the sun in your eyes
"That's not funny," Amet offers quickly in response to the mare's comment regarding the potential need to avenge her death, but his words are bolstered with unconstrained laughter that contradicts his terse statement. He's impressed with Ciri's ability to share humor with him while he assists her into the lake to cleanse her wounds - there had been a time that the Akhal-Teke would try to lift the spirits of his younger siblings following a particularly brutal encounter with Him, though none of the trio had been very apt to appreciate humor while they lived in the Dunes. They've all changed so much since then, and Amet has come to find that comic relief can be just the thing to make someone's worries seem less daunting.
The gilded King can't remember the last time he'd been swimming in the lake. Surely it had been before the Lost Boys attack, which had left the water basin gray with ash and putrid with the scent of boiled fish carcasses, and that had been just over a year ago now. He revels in the warmth of it (thankful that the water is clean and inviting once more) and in the way his sleek, plated frame slips through almost soundlessly. Rivulets fall from Amet's muzzle as he reaches for Ciri and washes her torn flesh gently. His nostrils flare instinctively to inhale the scents of the lake water and the smoky black mare that intermingle, no longer marred by the smell of a festering wound. The skin beneath the red wytch's ointment is pink and tender, though it looks much better than when he'd first encountered the silver-eyed mare on the shoreline, and the realization coaxes a small smile from the Dragon King.
Cleansing the paste from Ciri's smoky black coat proves to be arduous, and even more so when he has to compete with the chills that wrack her entire frame, but Amet works methodically and unhurried, offering the mare a steady shoulder whenever her legs threaten to give out. He finally begins to coax the mud from her most gruesome injury, the one that ravaged the skin and muscle at her shoulder, lost in concentration until Ciri's voice breaks the silence.
He stills, his damp muzzle still tucked against her shoulder, his eyes hesitant to move in the direction she is facing. He knows even before he turns that she's gazing upon his sad wisteria tree, the one that had offered him shelter and shade beneath its magnificent purple boughs for the first year he and Iset had lived in Hyaline; the one that stood like a silent and peaceful sentinel lakeside, where he could watch the residents of his home mingle, and where they could always look to find him.
"Hyaline was attacked during Autumn of last year," he says finally, as he returns to his work at her shoulder, "A group of intruders came in the middle of the night and burned all of the forest to the east. They ripped up the earth, toppled trees…" he pauses to inspect the flesh he'd revealed from beneath the muddy paste, "they boiled the lake until all of the fish died. Most of it has regrown, except my favorite tree." The young stallion works to keep the bitterness from his voice as his amber gaze turns to linger on the charred topiary.
"Come," he says quietly as his gaze returns to Ciri, warm and friendly, "it's time to put more of the paste on you. Use me for support, please, if you need to…"
Amet
@[Ciri]