[open] don't get cut on my edges

[Amet]

don't get cut on my edges ─
I'm the king of everything and oh my tongue is a weapon

Winter clings to naked boughs and runs chilly fingers up his spine, and despite the dragonhide that blankets him, Amet shivers. A quiet bout of laughter follows soon after as memories of his youthful kingship crawl forth from dusty, cob-webbed corners of his mind ─ he'd been so unsure, and yet... so determined to prove that he was no longer the young boy from the Dunes, his blood hot with desert sand, that he'd taken on the weight of a kingdom and its people at the age of two.

And oh, how it still flourishes.

He remembers rolling next to the lakeshore with Iset, laughing and rambling and butting heads with vernal giddiness until finally they decided... the Lake was no longer the Lake. It was Hyaline. It was theirs.

A light-hearted smile alights itself upon his lips as he continues even further, noticing only now that the forest of flamboyants and wisterias, red maple and cherry, no longer speaks of the fire that had nearly destroyed it all those years ago. Not even a whisper. With each stride, the akhal-teke stallion falls into deeper and deeper love with the home that had become his sanctuary, and the sanctuary of so many others, after he had fled the Dunes as a child.

And then, it surprises him. At first, Amet does not notice the sound of rustling wings or the wind that whips between cerulean feathers ─ the sound seems far away, masked by a gentle squall and the volume of his own thoughts. Only when Solace is nearly upon him does Amet yank his bright eyes from Hyaline's scenery and to the pegasus, surprised laughter falling from an open maw as she lands and rushes to him. Caught in a tight embrace, his own gilded neck flung over hers, relief floods through Amet's lithe body at the presence of the younger mare. "Solace," he responds in a tight-throated whisper as they recoil, though not unkindly, from each other's embrace.

"I couldn't stay away," he tells her truthfully and with no preamble, "I was worried you'd be gone." With a gentle bump of his muzzle against her shoulder and eyes bright with curiosity, Amet motions towards the lake and his favorite wisteria tree. "Let's rest over there, and then I need you to tell me absolutely everything about the last few years."

- Amet -

[@[Solace]! ♥]

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