[open] broken when I'm open [Any]

[Cress]

all that we have amassed sits before us, shattered into ash

Every time she returns, something gets torn out from under her. She is lost, confused—she isn't sure of what to do. Her cream-and-gold legs can only traverse the same spits of land for so long before she loses herself entirely, and for a long time, she has been on the very cusp. Her love is gone, her true home demolished, her children vanished to different corners of the world; she is entirely alone, and perhaps that is how she is meant to drift.

Only the recent return of her gifts has prompted her to return, if only to see what new wonders this turn of Beqanna holds for her. The flames in her chest have settled back into their home and she's been able to repair the small nicks on her legs and shoulders as if nothing had ever changed in the first place. The powers are her own, the only things that can't be stripped from her—aside from when Beqanna herself did the taking. They have returned, and they have made her as whole as she thinks she can ever be. She has lost too much.

Her only constant home is the populated gathering place, the wide-open meadow spotted with other horses. She doesn't often socialize (they're just trying to drag her to kingdoms and territories she doesn't want to visit) and seldom does she even watch the others. It's hard for her to care about them, to pretend to care about them, when she doesn't care in the least. The world can burn for all she cares. She is tired of always losing, always needing to be saved.

She wants to be herself for once, not someone else.

It is mid-autumn when she finally bestirs herself, lifting her deep brown eyes to gaze across the field. They fall on a familiar red stallion, pockmarked with scars and looking nearly as miserable and lonely as Cress herself feels. Is it...? She finds herself moving towards him almost against her will, the stallion who had also narrowly escaped Carnage drawing her in. "Ledger?" she whispers when she is within earshot, hoping that he recognizes her. They have had several conversations before, after all, and they had screamed to each other from their cells in Carnage's Hell. She could never forget his scarred face.

Noticing the gaping wound on his chest, she shuffles closer, her golden nose stretching out to brush his neck. "I can heal that for you, if you'd like," she tells him, raising her dark eyes to meet his.

cress

oxytocin x kindling