[private] hold me in this wild, wild world; Scorch

[Scorch]

WATCH THE FLAMES CLIMB HIGH INTO THE NIGHT

Their laughter mingled in the cool winter air as their greeting became prolonged and affectionate, his nose to her neck and then her nose to his, until at last satisfaction at greeting an old friend pervaded the pair. The sound of their laughter almost warmed the Nerinian coast, making Scorch remember her dear Jungle - and of course she would remember it in such company as Brennen's, the only face from Before that she has seen since Tantalize, on the day of her rebirth. But although her life's legacy stood in the forefront of her mind, still the mare felt but happiness, smiling unendingly in Brennen's direction as they settled to chat.

"I'd probably go and off myself if I woke up from death to find out that you weren't here," She quipped at his admittedly affectionate statement of having missed her. "There's no point in raising hell if you don't have your best hell-raiser around to do it with you." As she spoke these last few words - still in a joking tone - a more serious, cunning look flashed in her eyes. Brennen moved on quickly, but she knew they would circle back to the subject they both had in the forefront of their minds - friends or not, they were both still hell-raisers to the core.

(Or at least, they loved their old homes, and Gods forbid that they can't have them.)

Ears perked in genuine interest, Scorch listened intently to all the stallion had to say, feeling her mind's eye travel to the places he spoke of, playing out the little scenes he reenacted with the familiar faces he mentioned. She smirked at his mention of "threads" - weren't they all a little... Caught up in threads? But she shook her head almost imperceptibly at the fourth wall, shrugging off the omnipotent joke for a later time.

His story shifted though, his heavy eyes falling on her own, and a somberness befall her smiling face. She remembered what Heartfire, her granddaughter, had shown her of the Reckoning that first day back in the living realm (yes, the same day as she'd met Tantalize), and her ears pressed back at the thought. How much they'd lost to the wrath of Beqanna, and with next to no time to mourn. She held Brennen's gaze through the silence, watching as memories of his own flashed through his honeyed eyes, wondering if he could see the pain in hers, too.

He went on to lament his position in the new Beqanna, and Scorch could only listen in stony silence. Despite the warmth at being in his presence, the stories he bore chilled her to the bone. Her lips curled up in a half-smile at his forced joke, and perhaps he'd know that the expression was the best she could do in the way of lightheartedness; perhaps he'd understand that she still mourned the loss of a land she once knew intimately as greatly as himself.

She cleared her throat. "I was lucky," her voice rasped, low and quiet. "Nerine was here to catch me when I fell back into Beqanna." Her eyes drifted over her shoulder, scanning the thin forests that speckled the top of her cliffside kingdom. "It's loud here, like the Jungle, but otherwise..." She dropped her gaze before returning it to his. "All I know is that without the Amazonian legacy to uphold here, I would be no more than a common meadow-rat. And people like us, well. We have always been destined for greater things."

She smiled, but after the weight of this conversation, it felt wrong to be cunning. But what she had to say was imperative, it's why she got that damned migraine - and if she knew Brennen, and if she could read between the lines of his speech as well as she thought she could, then he wouldn't mind what she had to say next.

"I've helped worthy stallions back on the throne of bachelor kingdoms a few times before, Brennen."

Scorch

Once Khaleesi of the Amazon Jungle
Advisor to Nerine's Hestia

@[Brennen]